"Ian Watson - Slow Birds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

"You aren't accusing Master Tarnover, by any chance?" growled a beefy
farmer with a large wart on his cheek. "Sour grapes, Master Babbidge!
Sour grapes is what that sounds like, and we don't like the taste of those
here."
"Where is he, dammit?"
Uncle John laid a hand on his nephew's arm. "Jason, lad. Hush. This
isn't helping your Mum."
But then the crowd parted, and Tarnover sauntered through, still
holding the silver punch-bowl he had won.
"Well, Master Babbidge?" he enquired. "I hear you want a word with
me."
"Did you see who helped my brother onto that bird? Well, did you?"
"I didn't see," replied Tarnover coolly.
It had been the wrong question, as Jason at once realized. For if
Tarnover had done the deed himself, how could he possibly have watched
himself do it?
"Then did youтАФ"
"Hey up," objected the same farmer. "You've asked him, and you've had
his answer."
 "And I imagine your brother has had his answer too," said Tarnover. "I
hope he's well satisfied with it. Naturally I offer my heartfelt sympathies to
Mrs. Babbidge. If indeed the boy has come to any harm. Can't be sure of
that, though, can we?"
"Course we can't!"
Jason tensed, and Uncle John tightened his grip on him. тАЬNo, lad.
There's no use."
It was a sad and quiet long walk homeward that evening for the three
remaining Babbidges, though a fair few Atherton folk behind sang blithely
and tipsily, nonetheless. Occasionally Jason looked around for Sam
Partridge, but Sam Partridge seemed to be successfully avoiding them.
The next day, May the second, Mrs. Babbidge rallied and declared it to
be a "sorting out" day; which meant a day for handling all Daniel's clothes
and storybooks and old toys lovingly before setting them to one side out of
sight. Jason himself she packed off to his job at the sawmill, with a flea in
his ear for hanging around her like a whipped hound.
And as Jason worked at trimming planks that day the same shamed,
angry frustrated thoughts skated round and round a single circuit in his
head:
"In my book he's a murderer . . . You don't give a baby a knife to play
with. He was cool as a cucumber afterwards. Not shocked, no. Smug . . ."
Yet what could be done about it? The bird might have hung around for
hours more. Except that it hadn't. . .
Set out on a quest to find Daniel? But how? And where? Birds dodged
around. Here, there and everywhere. No rhyme or reason to it. So what a
useless quest that would be!
A quest to prove that Dan was alive. And if he were alive, then Tarnover
hadn't killed him.
"In my book he's a murderer . . ." Jason's thoughts churned on
impotently. It was like skating with both feet tied together.