"William Tenn - Generation of Noah" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

"Good. You kids better get at your books. Hey, stop that! Education will be very important,
afterwards. You never know what will be useful. And maybe only your mother and I to teach you."
"Gee," Herbie nodded at Josephine. "Think of that."
She pulled at her jumper where it was very tight over newly swelling breasts and patted her blonde
braided hair. "What about my mother and father, Mr. Plunkett? Won't they beтАФbeтАФ"
"Naw!" Herbie laughed the loud, country laugh he'd been practicing lately. "They're dead-enders.
They won't pull through. They live in the city, don't they? They'll just be someтАФ"
"Herbie!"
"тАФsome foam on a mushroom-shaped cloud," he finished, utterly entranced by the image. "Gosh,
I'm sorry," he said, as he looked from his angry father to the quiv-ering girl. He went on in a studiously
reasonable voice. "But it's the truth, anyway. That's why they sent you and Lester here. I guess I'll marry
youтАФafterwards. And you ought to get in the habit of calling him pop. Because that's the way it'll be."
Josephine squeezed her eyes shut, kicked the shed door open, and ran out. "I hate you, Herbie
Plunkett," she wept. "You're a beast!"
Herbie grimaced at his fatherтАФwomen, women, women!тАФand ran after her. "Hey, Jo! Listen!"
The trouble was, Plunkett thought worriedly as he carried the emergency bulbs for the hydroponic
garden into the cellarтАФthe trouble was that Herbie had learned through constant reiteration the one thing:
survival came before all else, and ameni-ties were merely amenities.
Strength and self-sufficiencyтАФPlunkett had worked out the virtues his children needed years ago,
sitting in air-conditioned offices and totting corporation balances with one eye always on the calendar.
"Still," Plunkett muttered, "stillтАФHerbie shouldn'tтАФ" He shook his head.
He inspected the incubators near the long steaming tables of the hydroponic gar-den. A tray about
ready to hatch. They'd have to start assembling eggs to replace it in the morning. He paused in the third
room, filled a gap in the bookshelves.
"Hope Josephine steadies the boy in his schoolwork. If he fails that next exam, they'll make me send
him to town regularly. Now there's an aspect of survival I can hit Herbie with."
He realized he'd been talking to himself, a habit he'd been combating futilely for more than a month.
Stuffy talk, too. He was becoming like those people who left tracts on trolley cars.
 "Have to start watching myself," he commented. "Dammit, again!"
The telephone clattered upstairs. He heard Ann walk across to it, that serene, unhurried walk all
pregnant women seem to have.
"Elliot! Nat Medarie."
"Tell him I'm coming, Ann." He swung the vault-like door carefully shut behind him, looked at it for a
moment, and started up the high stone steps.
"Hello, Nat. What's new?"
"Hi, Plunk. Just got a postcard from Fitzgerald. Remember him? The abandoned silver mine in
Montana? Yeah. He says we've got to go on the basis that lithium bombs will be used."
Plunkett leaned against the wall with his elbow. He cradled the receiver on his right shoulder so he
could light a cigarette. "Fitzgerald can be wrong sometimes."
"Uhm. I don't know. But you know what a lithium bomb means, don't you?"
"It means," Plunkett said, staring through the wall of the house and into a boiling Earth, "that a chain
reaction maybe set off in the atmosphere if enough of them are used. Maybe if only oneтАФ"
"Oh, can it," Medarie interrupted. "That gets us nowhere. That way nobody gets through, and we
might as well start shuttling from church to bar-room like my brother-in-law in Chicago is doing right
now. Fred, I used to say to himтАФNo, listen, Plunk: it means I was right. You didn't dig deep enough."
"Deep enough! I'm as far down as I want to go. If I don't have enough layers of lead and concrete
to shield meтАФwell, if they can crack my shell, then you won't be able to walk on the surface before you
die of thirst, Nat. NoтАФI sunk my dough in power supply. Once that fails, you'll find yourself putting the
used air back into your empty oxygen tanks by hand!"
The other man chuckled. "All right. I hope I see you around."