"Jerry Oltion - Abridged Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oltion Jerry)

Of course it did. It was full of definitions. Owen opened it at random--the
pages parted to the same F's he'd been at before -- and read the first entry
he
saw: fundamentalist, noun: an adherent of fundamentalism. He closed the
dictionary, wondering why it would have fundamentalist but not stevedore, then
a
sudden suspicion made him open it to the F's again. No fundamentalist. There
was
fundament, and fundus, but no fundamentalist. Or fundamentalism either, for
that
matter. Evidently whatever he intentionally looked up disappeared.

Too bad I couldn't get rid of the real thing that easily, he thought. The
fundies and their anti-gay attitudes had been a thorn in his side ever since .
.
. ever since when? Come to think of it, they'd never really amounted to much
after their "no special rights" ballot measure had died at the polls. Owen
hadn't heard much about them for over a year.

Or had he? There was a fuzziness to his thoughts that bothered him. Hadn't he
just read in today's paper that they were planning to introduce another bill
in
the state senate? He dug out the front page and scanned the headlines. Nothing
about it. Just an article on the chronic public transportation problems,
another
about a mysterious crop failure in the Peruvian Andes, and another about a new
automated cargo-handling system for unloading ships.

The hair was beginning to stand up on the back of his neck. Had he somehow
wiped
out the entire concept of fundamentalism just by looking it up in Richard's
dictionary? It seemed impossible, but so did want ads vanishing, and
ingredients
from his tea.

He needed something he could test. Something physical that he knew was there,
like the teacup. Good enough: Teacup. He opened the dictionary to the T's and
ran his finger down the column past "teacher."

He heard a wet sploosh beside him, and hot tea flooded the drafting table. It
ran off the edge onto his lap, and he leaped up, howling in pain and fear.
Jesus, the cup had just vanished. He ran for the kitchen and pulled a handful
of
paper towels off the roll beneath the cupboard, then ran back and sopped up
what
hadn't already soaked into the newspaper or dripped to the floor.

The dictionary had been splashed, too. Owen wiped off the wet pages and
fluttered them until they were dry, then threw away the towels and the soggy
newspaper and sat back down at the table.