"Feedback" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Katherine)

“What are the names of the seditioners in Fairfield?”

The teacher closed his eyes and leaned back against the tree. The crowd waited, their breaths suspended unconsciously, waiting for the whimpers and apologies and confesssion, ready to laugh. The teacher was already afraid. Tacks are small things, but they hurt, and they held an aura of ruthlessness that spoke of tortures to come that would frighten him more. There was no sound from him yet, as Walt reached for another tack, but he jerked when it touched him. They laughed and waited, and waited with increasing impatience.

Walt’s smile was fading. People in the crowd called encouragement. “Go on Walt, more.” Walt put in more. He ran out of tacks and was handed another card of them.

“He’s being a martyr,” Bruce said, considering the shiny pale face and closed eyes with irritation. “A martyr with tacks. Trying to hold out long enough to seem noble.”

“Go on Walt!”

“He jumped that time,” said someone behind Bruce. “He’ll run out of nobility before we run out of tacks.” They laughed.

Walt retired to a corner and the young guard took his place.

“Are you, or are you not, a seditioner?”

It went on.



The harsh bright light of the lantern beat on the figures on the platform: the cluster of people at the sides where it curved around the tree; in the middle, leaning back against the trunk, the bony ungainly figure of the teacher, dressed only in shoes and green slacks. The light caught a decorative glitter of metal from Dunner’s chest.

“The names, Mr. Dunner, the names!”

One time he answered. “Nonsense,” he said in his clear teacher’s voice without opening his eyes.

There was no yielding in that answer, only an infuriating self-righteousness. They continued. The tacks were used up.

“Confess.” Already he had wasted half an hour of their time.

He opened his eyes. “I have committed no crimes.”

An angry sibilance of indrawn breath ran over the crowd. The questioner slapped his thick hand against the glittering chest, and Dunner’s arms jerked, and he leaned his head back against the tree trunk watching them with an air of suffering and patience.

The hypocrisy was intolerable.

“Noble. He’s being noble,” Gifford growled. “Give him something to be noble about, why don’t they?”

Someone handed up the corkscrew they had used to frighten the teacher with.

“Now we’ll see,” said someone on Bruce’s left.

The tall bony teacher stood upright, looking with quick jerks of his head from the faces of the crowd to the man approaching with the thing in his hand. Without any pause or relenting the glittering small kitchen object was brought nearer to him. Suddenly he spoke, looking over their heads.

“If you’ll examine the term ‘seditioner’ semantically, you will discover that it had lost its original meaning and become a negatively charged label for the term referent Innova—’ ”

A sudden blow stopped him.

“The names please, Mr. Dunner.” the names, please.”