"William Tenn - Eastward Ho!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

of a classicist. You're always trying to live in the Golden Age instead of the present, and a Golden Age
that really has little to do with the Sioux. Oh, I'll admit that we're as much Dakotan as the Crow, from the
linguist's point of view at any rate, and that, superficially, what applies to the Crow should apply to us.
But what happens when we quote Lowie in so many words and try to bring his precepts into daily life?"
"Enough," the chief announced. "Enough, Hangs A Tale. And you, too, Bright Book
JacketтАФenough, enough! These are private tribal matters. Though they do serve to remind us that the
paleface was once great before he became sick and corrupt and frightened. These men whose holy
books teach us the lost art of being real Sioux, men like Lesser, men like Robert H. Lowie, were not
these men palefaces? And in memory of them should we not show tolerance?"
"A-ah!" said Makes Much Radiation impatiently. "As far as I'm concerned, the only good paleface is
a dead paleface. And that's that." He thought a bit. "Except their women. Paleface women are fun when
you're a long way from home and feel like raising a little hell."
Chief Three Hydrogen Bombs glared his son into silence. Then he turned to Jerry Franklin. "Your
message and your gifts. First your message."
"No, Chief," Bright Book Jacket told him respectfully but definitely. "First the gifts. Then the
message. That's the way it was done."
"I'll have to get them. Be right back." Jerry walked out of the tent backwards and ran to where Sam
Rutherford had tethered the horses. "The presents," he said urgently. "The presents for the chief."
The two of them tore at the pack straps. With his arms loaded, Jerry returned through the warriors
who had assembled to watch their activity with quiet arrogance. He entered the tent, set the gifts on the
ground and bowed low again.
"Bright beads for the chief," he said, handing over two star sapphires and a large white diamond, the
best that the engineers had evacuated from the ruins of New York in the past ten years.
"Cloth for the chief," he said, handing over a bolt of linen and a bolt of wool, spun and loomed in
New Hampshire especially for this occasion and painfully, expen-sively carted to New York.
"Pretty toys for the chief," he said, handing over a large, only slightly rusty alarm clock and a
precious typewriter, both of them put in operating order by batteries of engineers and artisans working in
tandem (the engineers interpreting the brittle old documents to the artisans) for two and a half months.
"Weapons for the chief," he said, handing over a beautifully decorated cavalry sa-ber, the prized
hereditary possession of the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, who had protested its
requisitioning most bitterly ("Damn it all, Mr. President, do you expect me to fight these Indians with my
bare hands?" "No, I don't, Johnny, but I'm sure you can pick up one just as good from one of your eager
junior officers").
Three Hydrogen Bombs examined the gifts, particularly the typewriter, with some interest. Then he
solemnly distributed them among the members of his council, keeping only the typewriter and one of the
sapphires for himself. The sword he gave to his son.
Makes Much Radiation tapped the steel with his fingernail. "Not so much," he stated.
"Not-so-much. Mr. Thomas came up with better stuff than this from the Confederate States of America
for my sister's puberty ceremony." He tossed the saber negligently to the ground. "But what can you
expect from a bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing whiteskin stinkards?"
When he heard the last word, Jerry Franklin went rigid. That meant he'd have to fight Makes Much
RadiationтАФand the prospect scared him right down to the wet hairs on his legs. The alternative was
losing face completely among the Sioux.
"Stinkard" was a term from the Natchez system and was applied these days indis-criminately to all
white men bound to field or factory under their aristocratic Indian overlords. A "stinkard" was something
lower than a serf, whose one value was that his toil gave his masters the leisure to engage in the activities
of full manhood: hunting, fighting, thinking.
If you let someone call you a stinkard and didn't kill him, why, then you were a stinkardтАФand that
was all there was to it.
"I am an accredited representative of the United States of America," Jerry said slowly and distinctly,