"Theodore Sturgeon - The Dreaming Jewels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

little enough. Bed, dresser, closet with a cracked cheval glass. A child's desk,
practically a toy, that he had long outgrown. In the closet were three oiled-silk
dress-covers stuffed full of Tonta's unused clothes, which left almost no space for
his.
His ...
None of this was really his. If there had been a smaller room, he would have been
shoved into it. There were two guest bedrooms on this floor, and another above, and
they almost never had guests. The clothes he wore weren't his; they were
concessions to something Armand called "my position in this town" rags would have
done if it weren't for that.
He rose, the act making him conscious of the clutter he still clutched in his arms.
He put it down on the bed. The mitt was his, though. He'd bought it for seventy-five
cents from the Salvation Army store. He got the money by hanging around
Dempledorff's market and carrying packages for people, a dime a trip. He had
thought Armand would be pleased; he was always talking about resourcefulness and
earning ability. But he had forbidden Horty ever to do that again. "My God! People
will think we are paupers!" So the mitt was all he had to show for the episode.
All he had in the world -- except, of course, Junky.
He looked, through the half-open closet door, at the top shelf and its clutter of
Christmas-tree lights (the Christmas tree was outside the house, where the
neighbors could see -- never inside), old ribbons, a lampshade, and -- Junky.
He pulled the oversized chair away from the undersized desk and carried it -- if he
had dragged it, Armand would have been up the stairs two at a time to see what he
was up to, and if it was fun, would have forbidden it -- and set it down carefully in
the closet doorway. Standing on it, he felt behind the leftovers on the shelf until he
found the hard square bulk of Junky. He drew it out, a cube of wood, gaudily painted
and badly chipped, and carried it to the desk.
Junky was the kind of toy so well-known, so well-worn, that it was not necessary
to see it frequently, or touch it often, to know that it was there. Horty was a
foundling -- found in a park one late fall evening, with only a receiving blanket
tucked about him. He had acquired Junky while he was at the Home, and when he
had been chosen by Armand as an adoptee (during Armand's campaign for City
Counsellor, which he lost, but which he thought would be helped along if it were
known he had adopted a "poor little homeless waif") Junky was part of the bargain.
Horty put Junky softly on the desk and touched a worn stud at the side. Violently
at first, then with rusted-spring hesitancy, and at last defiantly, Junky emerged, a
jack-in-the-box, a refugee from a more gentle generation. He was a Punch, with a
chipped hooked nose which all but met his upturned, pointed chin. In the gulch
between these stretched a knowing smile.
But all Junky's personality -- and all his value to Horty -- was in his eyes. They
seemed to have been cut, or molded, blunt-faceted, from some leaded glass which
gave them a strange, complex glitter, even in the dimmest room. Time and again
Horty had been certain that those eyes had a radiance of their own, though he could
never quite be sure.
He murmured, "Hi, Junky."
The jack-in-the-box nodded with dignity, and Horty reached and caught its
smooth chin. "Junky, let's get away from here. Nobody wants us. Maybe we wouldn't
get anything to eat, and maybe we'd be cold, but gee ... Think of it, Junky. Not being
scared when we hear his key in the lock, and never sitting at dinner while he asks
questions until we have to lie, and -- and all like that." He did not have to explain