"John Varley - Persistence Of Vision2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

pegs into round holes to the ticking of a clock they could not see or hear. As a result, they
spent the rest of their lives in bed, and none of them complained, either. To protest, one must be
aware of the possibility of something better. It helps to have a language, too.
Several hundred of the children were found to have IQ'
within the normal range. There were news stories abou
them as they approached puberty and it was revealed that' .,. 40
there were not enough good people to properly handle them. Money was spent, teachers were trained.
The education expenditures would go on for a specified period of time, until the children were
grown, then things would go back to normal and everyone could congratulate themselves on having
dealt successfully with a tough problem.
And indeed, it did work fairly well. There are ways to reach and teach such children. They
involve patience, love, and dedication, and the teachers brought all that to their jobs. All the
graduates of the special schools left knowing how to speak with their hands. Some could talk. A
few could write. Most of them left the institutions to live with parents or relatives, or, if
neither was possible, received counseling and help in fitting themselves into society. The options
were limited, but people can live rewarding lives under the most severe handicaps. Not everyone,
but most of the graduates, were as happy with their lot as could reasonably be expected. Some
achieved the almost saintly peace of their role model, Helen Kelley. Others became bitter and
withdrawn. A few had to be put in asylums, where they became indistinguishable from the others of
their group who had spent the last twenty years there. But for the most part, they did well.
But among the group, as in any group, were some misfits. They tended to be among the
brightest, the top ten percent in the IQ scores. This was not a reliable rule. Some had
unremarkable test scores and were still infected with the hunger to do something, to change
things, to rock the boat. With a group of five thousand, there were certain to be a few geniuses,
a few artists, a few dreamers, hell-raisers, individualists, movers and shapers: a few glorious
maniacs.
There was one among them who might have been President but for the fact that she was
blind, deaf, and a woman. She was smart, but not one of the geniuses. She was a dreamer, a
creative force, an innovator. It was she who dreamed of freedom. But she was not a builder of
fairy castles. Having dreamed it, she had to make it come true.

The wall was made of carefully fitted stone and was about five feet high. It was
completely out of context with anything I had seen in New Mexico, though it was built of native
rock. You just don't build that kind of wall out there. You use barbed wire if something needs
fencing in; but many people

still made use of the free range and brands. Somehow it seemed transplanted from New England.
It was substantial enough that I felt it would be unwise to crawl over it. I had crossed
many wire fences in my travels and had not gotten in trouble for it yet, though I had some: talks
with some ranchers. Mostly they told me to keep moving, but didn't seem upset about it. This was
different. h set out to walk around it. From the lay of the land, I couldn't=' tell how far it
might reach, but I had time.
At the top of the next rise I saw that I didn't have far to go.. The wall made a right-
angle turn just ahead. I looked over it~ and could see some buildings. They were mostly domes,
the: ubiquitous structure thrown up by communes because of the' combination of ease of
construction and durability., There: were sheep behind the wall, and a few cows. They grazed on


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