"Anderson, Poul - There Will Be Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

The doctor and his wife had been invited, but discovered a prior commitment. Thus I didn't see, I heard how Jack walked out on the celebration and how indignant Birkelund was. Long afterward, Jack told: "He cornered me in the barn when the last guest had left who wasn't asleep on the floor, and said he was going to beat the shit out of me. I told him if he tried, I'd kill him. I meant that. He saw it, and went off growling. From then on, we spoke no more than we couldn't avoid. I did my chores, my share of work come harvest or whatever, and when I'd eaten dinner I went to my room."
And elsewhere.
The balance held till early December. What tipped it doesn't matter-something was bound to-but was, in fact, Eleanor's asking Jack if he'd given thought to the college he would like to attend, and Birkelund shouting, "He can damn well get the lead out and go serve his country like I did and take his GI if they haven't cashiered him," and a quarrel which sent her upstairs fleeing and in tears.
Next day Jack was not there.
He returned at the end of January, would say no word about where he had been or what he had done, and stated that he would leave for good if his stepfather took the affair to the juvenile authorities as threatened. I'm certain he dominated that scene, and won himself the right to be left in peace. Both his appearance and his demeanor were shockingly changed.
Again the household knew a shaky equilibrium. But six weeks later, upon a Sunday when Jack had gone for his usual long walk after returning from church, he forgot to lock the door to his room. Little Harold noticed, entered, and rummaged through the desk. His find, which he promptly brought to his father, blew apart the whole miserable works.

Snow fell, a slow thick whiteness filling the windows. What daylight seeped through was silver-gray. Outdoors the air felt almost warm-and how utterly silent.
Eleanor sat on our living-room couch and wept. "Bob, you've got to talk to him, you, you, you've got to help him . . . again.
What happened when he ran away? What did he do?"
Kate laid arms around her and drew the weary head down to her own shoulder. "Nothing wrong, my dear," she murmured. "Oh, be very sure. Always remember, Jack is Tom's son."
I paced the rug, in the dull twilight against which we had turned on no lights. "Let's spell out the facts," I said, speaking bolder than I felt. "Jack had this mimeographed pamphlet that Sven describes as Communist propaganda. Sven wants to call the sheriff, the district attorney, anybody who can force Jack to tell who he fell in with while he was gone. You slipped out to the shed, drove off in the pickup, met the boy on the road, and brought him here."
"Y-y-yes. Bob, I can't stay. Ingeborg's at home. . . . Sven will call me an, an unnatural mother-"
"I might have a few words to say about privacy," I answered, "not to mention freedom of speech, press, and opinion." After a pause: "Uh, you told me you snaffied the pamphlet?"
"I-" Eleanor drew back from Kate's embrace. Through tears and hiccoughs, a strength spoke that I remembered: "No use for him to call copper if the evidence is gone."
"May I see it?" I asked.
She hesitated. "It's . . . a prank, Bob. Nothing s-s-significant. Jack's waiting-"
-in my office, by request, while we conferred. He had shown me a self-possession which chified this winter day.
"He and I will have a talk," I said, "while Kate gets some coffee, and I expect some food, into you. But I've got to have something to talk about."
She gulped, nodded, fumbled in her purse, and handed me several sheets stapled together. I settled into my favorite armchair, left shank on right knee, a good head of steam in my pipe, and read the document.
I read it twice. And thrice. I quite forgot the women.
Here it is. You won't find any riddles.
But hark back. The date was the eleventh of March, in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and fifty-one.
Harry S Truman was President of the United States, having defeated Thomas E. Dewey for election, plus a former Vice
President who would later have the manhood to admit that his party had been a glove on the hand of Moscow. This was the capital of a Soviet Union which my adored FDR had assured me was a town-meeting democracy, our gallant ally in a holy war to bring perpetual peace. Eastern Europe and China were down the gullet. Citizens in the news included Alger Hiss, Owen Lattimore, Judith Coplon, Morton Sobell, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Somehow, to my friends and myself, they did not make Joseph McCarthy less of an abomination. But under the UN flag, American young men were dying in battle-five and a half years after our V-days!-and their kifiers were North Korean and Chinese. Less than two years ago, the first Russian atomic bombs had roared. NATO, hardly older, was a piece of string in the path of hundreds of divisions. Most of us, in an emotional paralysis which let us continue our daily lives, expected World War III to break out at any instant.
I could not altogether blame Sven Birkelund for jumping to conclusions.
But as I read, and read, my puzzlement deepened.
Whoever wrote this thing knew Communist language-I'd been through some books on that subject-but was emphatically not a Communist himself. What, then, was he?
Hark back, I say. Try to understand your world of 1951.
Apart from a few extremists, America had never thought to question her own rightness, let alone her right to exist. We knew we had problems, but assumed we could solve them, given time and good will, and eventually everybody of every race, color, and creed would live side by side in the suburbs and sing folk songs together. Brown vs. Board of Education was years in the future; student riots happened in foreign countries, while ours worried about student apathy; Indochina was a place where the French were experiencing vaguely noticed difficulties.
Television was hustling in, and we discussed its possible effects. Nuclear-armed intercontinental missiles were on their way, but nobody imagined they could be used for anything except the crudest exchange of destructions. Overpopulation was in the news but would soon be forgotten. Penicillin and DDT were unqualified friends to man. Conservation meant preserv
ing certain areas in their natural states and, if you were sophisticated about such matters, contour plowing on hillsides. Smog was in Los Angeles and occasionally London. The ocean, immortal mother of all, would forever receive and cleanse our wastes. Space ifight was for the next century, when an eccentric millionaire might finance a project. Computers were few, large, expensive, and covered with blinking lights. If you followed the science news, you knew a little about transistors, and perhaps looked forward to seeing cheap, pocket-sized radios in the hands of Americans; they could make no difference to a peasant in India or Africa. All contraceptives were essentially mechanical. The gene was a locus on the chromosome. Unless he blasted himself back to the Stone Age, man was committed to the machine.
Put yourself in 1951, if you can, if you dare, and read as I did that jape on the first page of which appeared the notice "Copyright (c) 1970 by John F. Havig."
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WITHIT'S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY

Activist: A person employing tactics in the cause of liberation which, when used by a fascist, are known as McCarthyism and repression.
Aggression: Any foreign policy advocated by a fascist.

Black: Of whole or partial sub-Saharan African descent; from the skin color, which ranges from brown to ivory. Not to be confused with Brown, Red, White, or Yellow. This word replaces the former "Negro," which today is considered insulting since it means "Black."
Bombing: A method of warfare which delivers high explosives from the air, condemned because of its effects upon women, children, the aged, the sick, and other noncombatants, unless these happen to have resided in Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Osaka, etc., though not Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Cf. missile.
Brown: Of Mexican descent; from the skin color, which ranges from brown to ivory. Not to be confused with Black, Red, White, or Yellow.
Brutality: Any action taken by a policeman. Cf. pig.

Chauvinism: Belief of any Western White man that there is anything to be said for his country, civilization, race, sex, or self. Chauvinist: Any such man; hence, by extension, a fascist of any nationality, race, or sex.
Colonialist: Anyone who believes that any European- or North American-descended person has any right to remain in any territory outside Europe or North America where his ancestors happened to settle, unless these were Russian. Cf. native.
Concentration camp: An enclosed area into which people suspect to their government or to an occupying power are herded. No progressive country or liberation movement can operate a concentration camp, since by definition these have full support of the people. NB: Liberals consider it impolite to mention Nisei in this connection.
Conformist: One who accepts establishment values without asking troublesome questions. Cf. nonconformist.
Conservative: See aggression, bombing, brutality, chauvinism, colonialist, concentration camp, conformist, establishment, fascist, imperialist, McCarthyism, mercenary, militaryindustrial complex, missile, napalm, pig, plutocrat, prejudice, property rights, racist, reactionary, repression, storm trooper, xenophobia.
Criminal: A fascist, especially when apprehended and punished. Cf. martyr.