"Henry Kuttner - Mutant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

however, were masters of magic, and were trying to stop the Green Man with spells. Little
whirlwinds of force spun underfoot, trying to trip the Green Man, a figure of marvelous muscular
development, handsome as a god, and hairless from head to foot, glistening pale green. The
whirlwinds formed a fascinating pattern. If you could thread a precarious path among them-avoiding
the pale yellow ones especially-you could get through.
And the hairy gnomes watched malignantly, jealously, from their crannies in the glass crags.
Al Burkhalter, having recently achieved the mature status of eight full years, lounged under a
tree and masticated a grass blade. He was so immersed in his daydreams that his father had to
nudge his side gently to bring comprehension into the half-closed eyes. It was a good day for
dreaming, anyway-a hot sun and a cool wind blowing down from the white Sierra peaks to the east.
Timothy grass sent its faintly musty fragrance along the channels of air, and Ed Burkhalter was
glad that his son was second-generation since the Blowup. He himself had been born ten years after
the last bomb had been dropped, but secondhand memories can be pretty bad too.
"Hello, Al," he said, and the youth vouchsafed a half-lidded glance of tolerant acceptance.
"Hi, Dad."
"Want to come downtown with me?"
"Nope," Al said, relaxing instantly into his stupor.
Burkhalter raised a figurative eyebrow and half turned. On an impulse, then, he did something he
rarely did without the tacit permission of the other party; he used his telepathic
power to reach into Al's mind. There was, he admitted to himself, a certain hesitancy, a
subconscious unwillingness on his part, to do this, even though Al had pretty well outgrown the
nasty, inhuman formlessness of mental babyhood. There had been a time when Al's mind had been
quite shocking in its alienage. Burkhalter remembered a few abortive experiments he had made
before Al's birth; few fathers-to-be could resist the temptation to experiment with embryonic
brains, and that had brought back nightmares Burkhalter had not had since his youth. There had
been enormous rolling masses, and an appalling vastness, and other things. Prenatal memories were
ticklish, and should be left to .qualified mnemonic psychologists.
But now Al was maturing, and daydreaming, as usual, in bright colors. Burkhalter, reassured, felt
that he had fulfilled his duty as a monitor and left his son still eating grass and ruminating.


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Just the same there was a sudden softness inside of him, and the aching, futile pity he was apt to
feel for helpless things that were as yet unqualified for conflict with that extraordinarily
complicated business of living. Conflict, competition, had not died out when war abolished itself;
the business of adjustment even to one's surroundings was a conflict, " and conversation a duel.
With Al, too, there was a double problem. Yes, language was in effect a tariff wall, and a Baldy
could appreciate that thoroughly, since the wall didn't exist between Baldies.
Walking down the rubbery walk that led to town center, Burkhalter grinned wryly and ran lean
fingers through his well-kept wig. Strangers were very often surprised to know that he was a
Baldy, a telepath. They looked at him with wondering eyes, too courteous to ask how it felt to be
a freak, but obviously avid. Burkhalter, who knew diplomacy, would be quite willing to lead the
conversation.
"My folks lived near Chicago after the Blowup. That was why."
"Oh." Stare. "I'd heard that was why so many-" Startled pause.
"Freaks or mutations. There were both. I still don't know which class I belong to," he'd add
disarmingly.
"You're no freak!" They did protest too much.