"Pohl, Frederik - The Sweet, Sad Queen Of The Grazing Isles" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pohl Frederick)

The Sweet, Sad Queen Of The Grazing Isles.By Frederik Pohl
From Pohlstars
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THE SWEET, SAD QUEEN OF THE GRAZING ISLES


At the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in 1982 I was part of a panel
discussing the work of the late Cordwainer Smith (pseudonym of the Johns Hopkins
political science professor, Paul M. A. Liriebarger). Paul Linebarger was an
author whom I published extensively as long as he lived while I was editing
Galaxy in the 1960s, and one whose work I greatly admire still. He was not
merely a contributor but a friend, for which reason he tolerated my practice of
changing almost every title of the Cordwainer Smith stories I published. (Other
writers were less forgiving.) While talking about this on the panel, it occurred
to me that it was a long time since I had made up a Cordwainer Smith story
title. So I amused myself (in the boring periods while other people were
talking) by inventing titles for stories Paul had never written, but should
have. The one I liked best was this one. . . and so, that afternoon, as part of
my self-imposed regime of defacing four pages of clean paper with writing every
day of my life, I began to write a story to go with the title. I do not think it
is a "Cordwainer Smith story' by any means. But I did borrow one of his favorite
devices in the writing of it- perhaps some readers will detect which one.


In Twenty and Three, born at sea, Her daddy endowed her a legacy. In Twenty and
Ten her brother Ben Stole the inheritance back again. She loves but she loses,
she weeps as she smiles, The sweet, sad queen of the grazing isles


BECAUSE I DID THE OLD COMMODORE A FAVOR, he promised I would always have a job
with the Fleet. I always did. I always do still, because even now I have the
job. The title and the pay and the working conditions have changed a dozen
times, and these times not the best of them. But even Jimmy Rex knows I have
that right to a job, and grants it. Meanly.
The favor I did for Commodore Mackenzie was done long before he was a Commodore,
and I could have gone to jail for it. Jason, he said, give me a month. I need an
extension on my loans, thirty days at most, and if you give it me, you'll never
have to worry again as long as you live. I will worry, though, I said-a boy
still in his twenties, just a keypuncher in the records section of a bank-I'll
worry about the law, at least until the statute of limitations runs out, because
buggering the records is a penal offense. Only if they catch you, he said,
laughing, and that they can't do. For you'll be at sea, where the land law
cannot reach. It was his first oaty-boat that was building at the time, you see,
and he had used up all his wife's money and all he could cajole out of his first
two financial backers, and the third one, the big one, was trying to make up his
mind to plunge.
He was a powerful man even then, James Mackenzie. No older than forty. no gigger
than most but the blue eyes flashed and the smile was sure, and he knew how to
talk a person toward any place he chose. But what decided me was not Mackenzie.