"Elgin,.Suzette.Haden.-.Ozark.-.01.-.Twelve.Fair.Kingdoms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

"Precisely," I said, flat as pondwater "And that is just the
point. You see, youall, how it will look? First, parlor tricks.
Then, a kind of tinkering—nothing serious, just tinkering—
with the Mules. And then, to show that what goes four steps
can go twelve, the baby-snatching. Again, you notice, without
any harm done."

"Aw," said Jubal, "it's just showing off. A display of power
Like throwing a dead goat into your well."

"That it is," I said. " 'See what we can do?' it says.
. . . 'And think what we might do, if we cared to.' That's the
message being spread here. Think the Wommacks will fly here
from the coast knowing their Mules may drop out from under
them any moment, to come to the support of our so-called
Confederation?"

"Disfederation," murmured Patience of dark. "A more
accurate term at this point."

"Patience," I said, "you hurt me."

"Howsomever and nevertheless," she said, "it's true. And
anything but a sure hand now will wreck it all."

We sat there silent, though Emmalyn fidgeted some, because
it wasn't anything to be serene about. Marktwain, Oklahomah,
and probably Mizzurah, agreed on the need for the Confedera-
tion of Continents; and their Kingdoms were willing to back it

19 SUZEITE HADEN ELGIN

as best they could. But the whole bulk of Aricansaw lay
between Marktwain and Mizzurah, and the Ocean of Storms
between all of us and either Kintucky or Tinaseeh; and the
three loyal continents all put together were not the size of
Tinaseeh. Since the day the Twelve Families first landed on this
planet in 2021, since the moment foot was set on this land and
it was named Ozark in the hope it would prove a homeworld to
our people, those of us who preferred not to remain trapped
forever in the twenty-first century had been in the minority.

The Twelve Families had seen, on Old Earth, what the
centralization of a government could mean. They had seen war
and waste and wickedness beyond-description, though the
descriptions handed down to us were enough to this day to
keep children in Granny Schools awake in the long nights of
winter, shivering more with nightmare than with the cold,
Twelve Kingdoms, we had. And at least four of them ready to