"Kate Wilhelm - Julian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

clothes -- his others were sweat-soaked and smelled foul -- and lay down
again, this time with a comic book. He didn't read it, or even track the
pictures. He dozed, woke with a jerk of fear, and got up, afraid of another
nightmare. He noticed his telescope at the window and put it away without a
glance outside. It was only twelve, but he felt that the day already had been
endlessly long, as if he had a fever that was distorting his perceptions of
time.

His mother called during her lunch hour.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing. Reading comics."

"How do you feel?"

"Okay."

"Julian, is your stomach still hurting?" There was a new note of anxiety in
her voice.

He made an effort to sound natural, but even to him his voice sounded
strange, toneless. "I feel okay now, Mom."

After a silence while she considered, she said, "I'm calling Esther Manning
to drop by. Let her in when she rings. And just lie around and take it easy."

"I don't need anyone to look at me, Mom. I'm okay now."

"Yes, I expect you are, but it won't hurt. Bye, honey. See you later."

Mrs. Manning was a tall heavy woman, not fat, but broad and big-boned. She
could tell fortunes with playing cards, and knew many strange and esoteric
things, like when and where to go out and find wild mushrooms, and if it was
going to snow, and when to go out to hear migrating geese. One time when
Julian had stayed home from school, she had dropped in, and when his mother
had mentioned his complaint, she had turned to Julian and winked quite openly.

She arrived an hour after his mother's call.

"Ah, Julian, another headache? A sore throat? A singularly bad case of
boredom?" She smiled widely and went ahead of him into the apartment. At the
entrance he had been in shadows, but now in the light from a broad tall
window, she paused to examine his face, find her manner changed. "Back into
bed, my boy, and I'll read you a story."

He protested that he did not want to go to bed, that he did not want her or
anyone to read to him now, because he was too old, that he wanted to finish
his model plane, but in the end he lay down and listened to her begin "The
Hound of the Baskervilles."