"H. Beam Piper - Graveyard of Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

At first, in the distance, it looked like a living city. Then, second by second, the stigmata of decay became
more and more evident. Terraces empty or littered with rubbish; gardens untended and choked with wild
growth; windows staring blindly; walls splotched with lichens and grimy where the rains could not wash
them.

For a moment, he was afraid that some disaster, unmentioned in his father's letters, had befallen. Then he
realized that the change had not been in Litchfield but in himself. After five years, he was seeing it as it really
was. He wondered how his family and his friends would look to him now. Or Lynne.

The ship was coming in over the Mall; he could see the cracked paving sprouting grass, the statues askew on
their pedestals, the waterless fountains. He thought for an instant that one of them was playing, and then he
saw that what he had taken for spray was dust blowing from the empty basin. There was something about
dusty fountains, something he had learned at the University. Oh, yes. One of the Second Century Martian
Colonial poets, Eirrarsson, or somebody like that:

The fountains are dusty in the Graveyard of Dreams;
The hinges are rusty and swing with tiny screams.

There was more to it, but he couldn't remember; something about empty gardens under an empty sky. There
must have been colonies inside the Sol System, before the Interstellar Era, that hadn't turned out any better
than Poictesme. Then he stopped trying to remember as the ship turned toward the Airport Building and a
couple of tugsтИТтИТTerran Federation contragravity tanks, with derrickтИТbooms behind and pushтИТpoles where the
guns had beenтИТтИТcame up to bring her down.



Graveyard of Dreams 4
 Graveyard of Dreams
He walked along the starboard promenade to the gangway, which the first mate and a couple of airmen were
getting open.

*****

Most of the population of topтИТlevel Litchfield was in the crowd on the dock. He recognized old Colonel
Zareff, with his white hair and plumтИТbrown skin, and Tom Brangwyn, the town marshal, redтИТfaced and
bulking above the others. It took a few seconds for him to pick out his father and mother, and his sister Flora,
and then to realize that the handsome young man beside Flora was his brother Charley. Charley had been
thirteen when Conn had gone away. And there was Kurt Fawzi, the mayor of Litchfield, and there was Lynne,
beside him, her redтИТlipped face tilted upward with a cloud of bright hair behind it.

He waved to her, and she waved back, jumping in excitement, and then everybody was waving, and they were
pushing his family to the front and making way for them.

The ship touched down lightly and gave a lurch as she went off contragravity, and they got the gangway open
and the steps swung out, and he started down toward the people who had gathered to greet him.

His father was wearing the same black bestтИТsuit he had worn when they had parted five years ago. It had been
new then; now it was shabby and had acquired a permanent wrinkle across the right hip, over the pistolтИТbutt.
Charley was carrying a gun, too; the belt and holster looked as though he had made them himself. His
mother's dress was new and so was Flora'sтИТтИТprobably made for the occasion. He couldn't be sure just which