"Howard Waldrop - Ike At The Mike" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

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IKE AT THE MIKE

By Howard Waldrop

Ambassador Pratt leaned over toward Senator Presley. "My mother's ancestors
don't like to admit it," he said, "but they all came to the island from the
Carpathians two centuries ago. Their name then was something like Karloff." He
laughed through his silver mustache.
"Hell," said Presley, with the tinge of the drawl that came to his
speech when he was excited, as he was tonight. "My folks been dirt farmers all
the way back to Adam. They don't even remember coming from anywhere. But that
don't mean they ain't wonderful folks. Good people all the same."
"Of course not," said Pratt. "My father was a shopkeeper. He worked to
send all my older brothers into the Foreign Service. But when my time came, I
thought I had another choice. I wanted to run off to Canada or Australia,
perhaps try my hand at acting. I was in several local dramatic clubs, you
know. My father took me aside before my service exams. The day
before-I remember quite distinctly-he said, `William' he was the only member
of the family who used my full name-`William,' he said, `actors do not get
paid the last workday of each and every month.' Well, I thought about it
awhile, and next day passed my exams with absolute top grades."

Pratt smiled his ingratiating smile once more. There was something a little
scary about it, Presley thought, sort of like Raymond Massey's smile in
Arsenic and Old Lace. But the smile had seen Pratt through sixty years of
government service. It had been a smile that made the leaders of small
countries smile back as King Georges, number after number, took yet more of
their lands. It was a good smile; it made everyone remember his grandfather.
Even Presley.

"Folks is funny," said Presley. "God knows, I used to get up at barn dances
and sing myself silly. I was just a kid then, playing around."

"My childhood is so far behind me," said Ambassador Pratt. "I hardly remember
it. I was small. Then I had the talk with my father, and went to service
school, then found myself in Turkey, which at that time owned a large portion
of the globe. The Sick Man of Europe, it was called. You know I met Lawrence
of Arabia, don't you? Before the Great War. He was an archaeologist then. Came
to us to get the Ottomans to give him permission to dig up Petra. They thought
him to be a fool. Wanted the standard ninety percent share of everything, just
the same."

"You've seen a lot of the world change," said Senator E. Aaron Presley. He
took a sip of wine. "I've had trouble enough keeping up with it since I was
elected congressman six years ago. I almost lost touch during my senatorial
campaign, and I'll be damned if everything hadn't changed again by the time I