"Orson Scott Card - Missed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

Missed
By Orson Scott Card

Tim Bushey was no athlete, and if at thirty-one middle age wasn't
there yet, it was coming, he could feel its fingers on his spine. So
when he did his hour of exercise a day, he didn't push himself,
didn't pound his way through the miles, didn't stress his knees.
Often he relaxed into a brisk walk so he could look around and see
the neighborhoods he was passing through.
In winter he walked in mid-afternoon, the warmest time of the day.
In summer he was up before dawn, walking before the air got as hot
and wet as a crock pot. In winter he saw the school buses deliver
children to the street corners. In summer, he saw the papers getting
delivered.
So it was five-thirty on a hot summer morning when he saw the
paperboy on a bicycle, pedaling over the railroad tracks and up
Yanceyville Road toward Glenside. Most of the people delivering
papers worked out of cars, pitching the papers out the far window.
But there were a few kids on bikes here and there. So what was so
odd about him that Tim couldn't keep his eyes off the kid?
He noticed a couple of things as the kid chugged up the hill. First,
he wasn't on a mountain bike or a street racer. It wasn't even one
of those banana-seat bikes that were still popular when Tim was a
kid. He was riding one of those stodgy old one-speed bikes that were
the cycling equivalent of a '55 Buick, rounded and lumpy and heavy
as a burden of sin. Yet the bike looked brand-new.
And the boy himself was strange, wearing blue jeans with the cuffs
rolled up and a short-sleeved shirt in a print that looked like ...
no, it absolutely was. The kid was wearing clothes straight out of
"Leave It to Beaver." And his hair had that tapered buzzcut that
left just one little wave to be combed up off the forehead in front.
It was like watching one of those out-of-date educational films in
grade school. This kid was clearly caught in a time warp.
Still, it wouldn't have turned Tim out of his planned route -- the
circuit of Elm, Pisgah Church, Yanceyville, and Cone -- if it hadn't
been for the bag of papers saddled over the rack on the back of the
bike. Printed on the canvas it said, "The Greensboro Daily News."
Now, if there was one thing Tim was sure of, it was the fact that
Greensboro was a one-newspaper town, unless you counted the weekly
"Rhinoceros Times," and sure, maybe somebody had clung to an old
canvas paper delivery bag with the "Daily News" logo -- but that bag
looked new.
It's not as if Tim had any schedule to keep, any urgent
appointments. So he turned around and jogged after the kid, and when
the brand-new ancient bicycle turned right on Glenside, Tim was not
all that far behind him. He lost sight of him after Glenside made
its sweeping left turn to the north, but Tim was still close enough
to hear, in the still morning air, the faint sound of a rolled-up
newspaper hitting the gravel of a country driveway.
He found the driveway on the inside of a leftward curve. The