"Gene Wolfe - Copperhead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

"Naw vahn vahtches." She was clearly amused.

He shook his head. "I had been working hard. Not only after my inauguration, but for more than a year
before it. Working twelve or thirteen hours every day without a break. Spring came and my wife and I
came back here; I meant to take three days off--a long weekend. Some people in Spokane started
burning things again, and my three days turned out to be eighteen hours. I went back to Washington and
back to work."

"Aw douh nawt vhork. Aw douh nawt naw ahbawt dhees." She rose more gracefully than any dancer,
seeming to float from the chair.

"Fall came. Football season. I'd lost twenty pounds, and I was yelling at everybody. My wife had to stay
in Washington, but I cleared my desk and flew back here. I wanted to drink beer and watch football.
Most of all, I wanted to sleep."

She poked the fire as a child would, gratified by the cloud of sparks.

"I was here a day and half when General Martens called. There had never really been a crash before. All
that about Roswell was nonsense, but this time there'd been a real crash or something that looked like
one, and they had an artifact that still worked. I should have kept my damned mouth shut, but I said bring
it here. I wanted to see it."

"Dhees dhing 'ou shaw mee? Eet dhaws nawt eent'res mee."

"There are other universes." The new President's voice fell. "All the astrophysicists say so. The Changer
accesses them. Point it at something, press a button, and you get its cognate. Sometimes. Maybe all the
time, but maybe sometimes the cognate is so close you can't tell anything's happened. Did I tell you we
went up on the hill?"

" 'Ou deed nawt." She sat down again and crossed her legs. "Aw rhemember dhawt 'ill. Aw vhas colt."

He nodded. "You were naked. General Martens didn't want to talk in the house--he was afraid of
listening devices, really paranoid about them. We walked clear across the big meadow and climbed the
hill. I sat on a rock up there, and he on a fallen tree. I'd started to sit down beside him, but he didn't want
that, and at first I didn't understand. Later I got it--he was afraid I'd grab it."

She laughed.

"Which I did, in a way. He showed it to me, but he didn't want me to touch it. I was President,
goddamnit, and he was trying to give me orders. I made him give it to me and leave it with me. I told him
I'd give it back to him when I was through with it.

"Then I sat there on that rock and watched him walk back to the house--back to his blue Air Force
Chevy. I turned the Changer over and over in my hands, and I thought, "By God, this President stuff can
be fun once in a while. It's about time."

"Vhat ahbawt mee?"

"I'm getting to that. There's a big maple up there. It was fifteen or twenty feet from where I was sitting,
and its leaves were thick all around it." He paused, remembering. "Half its leaves had fallen, or about that.