"Henry Kuttner - Beggars in Velvet UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

Hobson said, "They're counting on the weight of numbers, of course. And they've got plenty of that. They aren't armed, I suppose, except for daggers-but then they don't need arms to do what they think they're going to do."
There was a dead silence in the room for a moment. Then Heath said in a thin voice, "What they think-?"
The Mute nodded toward the window. "Look."
There was a small rush toward the glass. Peering over one another's shoulders, the men in the room stared down the slope of the road, seeing the vanguard of the mob so near already that the separate torches were clearly distinguishable, and the foremost of the distorted, shouting faces. Ugly, blind with hatred and the intention to kill.
Hobson said in a detached voice, as if this imminent disaster were already in the past. "We've got the answer, you see -we know about this. But there's another problem I can't solve. Maybe it's the most important one of all." And he looked at the back of Burkhalter's head. Burkhalter was watching the road. Now he leaned forward suddenly and said,
"Look! There in the woods-what is it? Something moving-people? Listen-what is it?"
No one paid any attention beyond the first two or three words he spoke, for all of them saw it now. It happened very swiftly. One moment the mob was pouring unchecked up the road, the next a wave of shadowy forms had moved purposefully out of the trees in compact, disciplined order. And above the hoarse shouting of the mob a cry went terribly up, a cry that chilled the blood.
It was the shrill falsetto that had once been the Rebel Yell. Two hundred years ago it echoed over the bloody battlefields of the Civil War. It moved westward with the conquered rebels and became the cowboy yell. It moved and spread with westerners after the Blowup, the tall, wild men who could not endure the regimentation of the towns. Now it was the Hedgehound yell.
From the window the hospital watchers saw it all, enacted as if on a firelit stage below them.
Out of the shadows the men in buckskin came. Firelight flashed on the long blades they carried, on the heads of the arrows they held against the bent bows. Their wild, shrill, terrible yell rose and fell, drowning out the undisciplined screams of the mob.
The buckskin ranks closed in behind the mob, around it. The townsmen began to huddle together a little, until the long loosely organized mob had become a roughly compact circle with the woodsmen surrounding them. There were cries of, "Kill 'em! Get 'em all!" from the townsmen, and the disorderly shouts rose raggedly through the undulations of the Hedgehound yell, but you could tell after the first two or three minutes who had the upper hand.
Not that there was no fighting. The men at the front of the mob had to do something. They did-or tried to. It was little more than a scuffle as the buckskin forms closed in.
"They're only townsmen, you see," Hobson said quietly, like a lecturer explaining some movie scene from old newsreel files. "Did you ever think before how completely the profession of the fighting man has died out since the Blowup? The only organized fighting men left in the world are out there, now." He nodded toward the Hedgehound ranks, but nobody saw the motion. They were all watching with the incredulous eagerness of reprieved men as the Hedgehounds competently dealt with the mob which was so rapidly changing into a 'disorganized rabble now as the nameless, powerful, ugly spirit that had welded it into a mob died mysteriously away among them.
All it took was superior force, superior confidence-the threat of weapons in more accustomed hands. For four generations these had been townsmen whose ancestors never knew what war meant. For four generations the Hedgehounds had lived only because they knew unremitting warfare, against the forest and mankind.
Competently they went about rounding up the mob.
"It doesn't solve anything," Burkhalter said at last, reluctantly, turning from the window. Then he ceased to speak, and sent his mind out in rapid thoughts so that the nontelepaths might not hear. Don't we have to keep it all quiet? Do we still have to decide about-killing them all? We've saved our necks, sure-but what about the rest of the world?
Hobson smiled a grim, thin smile that looked odd on his plump face. He spoke aloud, to everyone in the room.
"Get ready," he said. "We're leaving the hospital. All of us. The non-Baldy staff, too."
Heath, sweating and haggard, caught his breath. "Wait a minute. I know you're the boss, but-I'm not leaving my patients!"
"We're taking them, too," Hobson said. Confidence was in his voice, but not in his eyes. He was looking at Burkhalter. The last and most difficult problem was still to be met
The Cody's thought touched Hobson's mind. All ready.
You've got enough Hedgehounds?
Four tribes. They were all near the Fraser Run. The new consulate set-up had drawn 'em from the north. Curiosity.
Report to group.
Scattered across the continent, Mutes listened. We've cleaned out Sequoia. No deaths. A good many got pretty well beaten up, but they can all travel. (A thought of wry amusement.) Your townspeople ain't fighters.
Ready for the march?
Ready. They're all rounded up, men, women and children, in the north valley. Umpire Vine's in charge of that sector.
Start the march. About the paranoids, any trouble there?
No trouble. They haven't figured it all out yet. They're still in the town, sitting tight. We've got to move fast, though. If they try to get out of Sequoia, my men will kill. There was a brief pause. Then-The march has started.
Good. Use the blindfolds when necessary.
There are no stars underground, the Cody's thought said grimly.
No non-Baldy must die. Remember, this is a point of honor. Our solution may not be the best one, but--
None will die.
We're evacuating the hospital. Is Mattoon ready?
Ready. Evacuate.
Burkhalter rubbed a welt on his jaw. "What happened?" he asked thickly, staring around in the rustling darkness of the pines.
A shadow moved among the trees. "Getting the patients ready for transportation-remember? You were slugged. That violent case-"
"I remember." Burkhalter felt sheepish. "I should have
watched his mind closer. I couldn't. He wasn't thinking-" He shivered slightly. Then he sat up. "Where are we?"
"Quite a few miles north of Sequoia."
"My head feels funny." Burkhalter rearranged his wig. He rose, steadying himself against a tree, and blinked vaguely. After a moment he had reoriented. This must be Mount Nich-ols, the high peak that rose tall among the mountains guarding Sequoia. Very far away, beyond intervening lower summits, he could see a distant glow of light that was the village.
But beneath him, three hundred feet down, a procession moved through a defile in the mountain wall. They emerged into the moonlight and went swiftly on and were lost hi shadow.
There were stretcher-bearers, and motionless, prone figures being carried along; there were men who walked arm in arm; there were tall men in buckskin shirts and fur caps, bows slung across their shoulders, and they were helping, too. The silent procession moved on into the wilderness.
"The Sequoia Baldies," Hobson said. "And the non-Baldy staff-and the patients. We couldn't leave them."
"But-"
"It was the only possible answer for us, Burkhalter. Listen. For twenty years we've been preparing-not for this, but for the pogrom. Up in the woods, in a place only Mutes know about, there's a series of interlocking caves. It's a city now. A city without population. The Cody's-there are four of them, really-have been using it as a laboratory and a hideout. There's material there for hydroponics, artificial sunlight, everything a culture needs. The caves aren't big enough to shelter all the Baldies, but they'll hold Sequoia's population."
Burkhalter stared. "The non-Baldies?"
"Yes. They'll be segregated, for a while, till they can face truth. They'll be prisoners; we can't get around that fact. It was a choice between killing them and holding them incommunicado. In the caves, they'll adapt. Sequoia was a tight, independent community. Family units won't be broken up. The same social pattern can be followed. Only-it'll be underground, in an artificial culture,"
"Can't the paranoids find them?"
"There are no stars underground. The paranoids may read the minds of the Sequoians, but you can't locate a mind by telepathic triangulation. Only Mutes know the location of the caves, and no paranoid can read a Mute's thoughts. They're on their way now to join us-enough Mutes to take