"Joe Haldeman - Guardian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

I followed her example with the bones. "They have a point."
"But really. They're so simple. Drives me mad." She was hungry for an
audience—her husband, also a preacher, refused to talk about her work with the Indians,
thinking it a total waste of time. After an hour, I had some sympathy with him. They
were an obstinate bunch, who apparently saw Sunday school as a source of amusement
and pastry.
But she planted a seed in my mind, which would germinate in Kansas, and later,
in Alaska, grow and flower. And one terrible night, it would save my life, and give me
new worlds.
The first threat.

Daniel emerged from the canoe ride drenched and excited. He would have gone back and
done it again if I'd let him. I was concerned with money and time and getting him into
some dry clothes. I didn't find out until the next day that the canoe had overturned, and he
and the Indian, Sam, had swum to shore and then raced down the riverbank to retrieve it!
He'd wanted to repeat the adventure to see whether they could make it around that
particular bend without capsizing again. Boys!
Our steamer for the two-day trip to Duluth was small and shabby, but Daniel was
happy because we were compelled to take separate berths, he in a males-only section,
where he had plenty of boisterous company. None of the other boys had "done" the
rapids.
I actually had a fine time myself. There had been a pretty good bookstore in Soo,
and I'd gotten two used Sherlock Holmes books and Stevenson's novel The Master of
Ballantrae (plus another Stevenson for Daniel's birthday). It was not only my reading that
was fantastic—the first afternoon we passed a long geological formation called Pictured
Rocks, sandstone in every color of the rainbow, carved by the elements into impossible
shapes. I did a watercolor sketch which, although reasonably accurate, looked like a work
of purest imagination. A few years after the War, I saw an exhibition of Salvador Dali,
and his tortured landscapes took me back there to the shores off Lake Superior.
(That means World War II, for the benefit of readers at the other end of this ink-
driven time machine. For the first half of my life, "the War" meant the War Between the
States, but the phrase's meaning has changed three times since. I can hope that Korea
doesn't become World War III, and thence "the War" for its own tenure, but hope is in
short supply right now.)
Lake Superior was as placid as Huron had been rough, the nights cold for late
June, but we had quilts and entertainment in the small lounge, from some of the
passengers—a family of gospel singers and a man who was rather their opposite, a
ragtime piano player who reeked of whiskey. He played with precision but could hardly
walk without assistance.
We weren't following the news, but as it turned out, we were fortunate to have
bypassed Chicago. The Pullman strikers and their sympathizers started to set fires and
battle with the police and the Illinois National Guard. President Cleveland eventually sent
in half the U.S. Army; pictures of downtown looked like an armed camp.
The harbor at Duluth was clogged with waiting barges, stalled by the strike. A
sign proclaimed it "The Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas," and on normal days it was
probably full of industry and bustle. Our steamer had to maneuver back and forth,
bumping against the closely anchored barges, to find its way to the passenger wharf.
I was afraid we also might be stuck in Duluth for the duration of the strike, but
there was no problem: the Minneapolis—St. Paul & Duluth Railroad didn't have any
Pullman equipment. In fact, there was a train leaving in less than an hour from when we