"Tom Purdom-Moonchild" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

Moonchild
by Tom Purdom
This story copyright 1965 by Tom Purdom. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All
other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


Ten minutes after his brother left the apartment, Harvey Oliver picked up his big wooden recorder and
started warming it between his hands. He had been playing the tenor recorder for nearly three years now
and he was getting pretty good at it. His big hands could handle the long stretch between the finger holes,
and the structured, measured music of the Baroque period had always appealed to him. The music had
been written in a century when there had still been country roads on Earth and no one had dreamed there
would ever be cities on the Moon, but something in his personality had always responded to it.
The recorder is a wind instrument, however. The pitch is controlled by the performer's control of his
breath pressure. A harsh, raspy note leaped out of the instrument before he was halfway through the
minuet and he pulled it away from his mouth and turned away from his music stand.
It had now been fourteen minutes since Ted had slipped through the door. It would take Ted twenty
minutes to walk down to King Garden and another five or ten to look it over and make sure they could
plant the containers without dodging too many mid-afternoon strollers.
His father raised his head and smiled thinly. "I'm afraid I'm not feeling particularly calm myself," Dr.
Oliver said.
"It's just tension," Harvey said. "I felt the same way the night before the election."
"Why don't we get the stuff out of the closet and get it set up?"
Harvey pulled the recorder apart and reached for the long swab he used to wipe out the moisture after
he finished playing it. His father stood up and Harvey watched his thin, stooped back as he opened the
closet and bent over.
"It's a good thing we aren't trying to do this with bombs," his father said. "I'd probably be sitting here
thinking they were going to go off accidentally every time somebody walked past the door."
Harvey chuckled politely. His father turned away from the closet and laid a belt and three plastic
containers on a stone coffee table.
"All in order," Dr. Oliver said. "All primed and ready to go."
Harvey stood up and untied the sash around his waist. His father was wearing shorts and a belted judo
jacket, but students all over Earth and the Moon had been wearing long, brilliantly colored robes for the
last two years. His father was going to plant the containers in the park, but he and his brother were going
to tote them there.
His father stuffed the containers into the pouches on the belt and he stepped up to the table and picked
it up. He had helped his father make the chemicals in the containers but he didn't feel any sense of
accomplishment when he looked at them.
"It's the only way we can do it," Dr. Oliver murmured. "We aren't going to get anywhere sitting around
waiting for the next so-called election."
Harvey pushed back his robe and buckled the belt around the turtleneck body shirt he wore
underneath it. His father had said that a dozen times already, but Harvey knew he was really trying to
convince himself. He was only fourteen but he had been studying modern psychology since he had been
in kindergarten and he understood most of the dynamics of normal human behavior. His father was just
as troubled by this as he was. Every time Dr. Oliver made one of his little speeches, he was really telling
his sons he wasn't sure he was doing the right thing.
 I thought about this for a long time, Harvey. I've never done a violent thing in my life. This is