"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Gallery of His Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

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The Gallery of His Dreams
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
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Science Fiction

Let him who wishes to know what war is look at this series of illustrations.... It was so nearly like visiting the
battlefield to look over these views, that all the emotions excited by the actual sight of the stained and sordid scene,
strewed with rags and wrecks, came back to us, and we buried them in the recesses of our cabinet as we would have
buried the mutilated remains of the dead they too vividly represented.



тАФOliver Wendell Holmes

1838

Brady leaned against a hay bale and felt the blades dig into his back. He smelled of pig dung and his own
sweat, and his muscles ached. His da had gone to the pump to wash up, and then into the cow shed, but
Brady claimed he needed a rest. His da, never one to argue with relaxation, let him sit against the hay
bales. Brady didn't dare stay too long; if his ma saw him, she would be on the front porch, yelling insults
unintelligible through her Irish brogue.

He did need to think, though. Milking cows and cleaning the pigpen didn't give him enough time to make
plans. He couldn't stay on the farm the rest of his life, he knew that. He hated the work, the animals, the
smell, and the long hours that all led to a poor, subsistence living. His da thought the farm a step up from
the hovel he had grown up in and certainly an improvement from Brady's grandfather's life back in the
Old Country. Brady often wished he could see what his da's or his grandfather's life had really been like.
But he had to trust their memories, memories that, at least in his grandfather's case, had become more
and more confusing as the years progressed.

Brady pulled a strand of hay from the bale, sending a burst of sharp fresh summer-scent around him. He
wanted more than a ruined farm and a few livestock in upstate New York. Mr. Hanley, his teacher, had
pulled Brady aside on the day he left school, and reminded him that in the United States of America even
farmboys could become great men. Mr. Hanley used to start the school day by telling the boys that the
late President Thomas Jefferson defined the nation's creed when he wrote that all men were created
equal, and President Andrew Jackson had proven the statement true with his election not ten years
before.

Brady didn't want to be president. He wanted to do something different, something he couldn't even
imagine now. He wanted to be greatтАФand he wanted to be remembered.

1840

The spring thaw had turned the streets of New York city into rivers.

Brady laughed as he jumped from one sidewalk board to the next, then turned and waited for Page to
jump. Page hesitated a moment, running a slender hand through his beard. Then he jumped and landed,
one tattered shoe in the cold water, one out. Brady grabbed his friend's arm, and pulled him up.