"Stanley G. Weinbaum - The New Adam" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

purposeful expression; now he was grasping at objects with his odd hands. They were agile little hands,
unusually apt at seizing what was within their reach. The fingers closed like small tentacles about John's
swinging watch, and tugged it. Strangely and precociously, not toward the thin-lipped mouth, but before
the eyes for examination.
And time dragged on. John gave up his office in the Loop, moving it to his home on Kenmore. He
installed a desk in the living room, and a wall tele-phone; just as good as being downtown, he thought,
and it saved the street car ride. He had the house wired for electric light; everybody was abandoning the
hot gas-burners. His practice was well-established, and clients quickly learned of his new business
quar-ters. And at this time a new company was being formed to manufacture gasoline automobiles; he
bought a few shares as a speculation, believing the devices due for a wave of popularity, And the "L"
nosed northward block by block. This was Chicago of the first decade, sprawling in its mud and glitter.
No seer nor sorcerer whispered that the young city had spawned an egg whose maturity was as yet
incon-ceivable.
The child Edmond was speaking a few words now. "Light," he said, when the yellow carbon-filament
flashed on. He toddled around the office, learned the sound of the telephone bell. His nurse dressed him
in little shirted suits that went inharmoniously with his pinched and precocious features; he looked like a
waxen elf or a changeling. Yet, from a parental stand-point he was a model child; mischief seemed absent
from his make-up. He was strangely content to be alone, and happily played meaningless games with
himself. John still talked to him at evening. He lis-tened owlishly solemn, and seldom questioned, and
seasons came and vanished.
Nothing ever disturbed his poise. John's equally brim and never friendly brother Edward (also named
for that old father of both) came once or twice to call in the early years.
"The brat's lonesome," he stated badly. "You'll bring him up queer unless you get him some friends."
The four-year-old Edmond answered for himself in a piping voice: "I'm not lonesome."
"Eh? Who do you play with?"
"I play with myself. I talk with myself. I don't need any friend."
His uncle laughed. "Queer, John, like I told you."
Queer or not, the imp developed. At six he was a silent slender child with curious amber eyes and
non-descript brown hair, and a habit of spending many hours alone at the window. He betrayed none of
the father-worship common to sons, but he liked the slow-ly aging John, and they got along well together
in a distant way. His curious hands had long ago ceased to bother his father; they were at least as useful
as normal members, and at times unusually apt and delicate. The child built thingsтАФtall houses of cards
that John's steadiness could not duplicate, intricate bits of machinery from a mechanical building toy, and
sometimes neat little sailing planes of paper, matches, and glue.
At this age Edmond's quiet way of living was rather ruthlessly upset. John chose to enter him in
school.

CHAPTER II
MORNING ON OLYMPUS

THERE was a public school at the time not more than a block and a half from the house on Kenmore.
John placed young Edmond there, disregarding the Kind-ergarten and starting him in the first grade. The
nurse, more or less of an ornament the last two years, dropped out of the boy's sphere. His father took
him
the short distance to school for a week or so, and thereafter he trudged it himself, as he had often
watched others from his window..
For the first time in his short life his world im-pinged on that of others. He was thrust willy-nilly out of
his privacy into the semi-public ordeal of grade school. His first day was something of a trial; he was
stared at, and stared back, and stood for the most part quietly waiting for instructions. A few young
sophisticates who had come up from Kindergarten grouped together, calling each other by name, and