"Barry N. Malzberg - The Third Part" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

"Tell that to them." Jeb pointed at the mob advancing, closing in, fists raised, their open
mouths great black spoons doling out the red lava of hate.
"Won't do any good, Mister," Damascus said. "Us talkin' to them and all. They won't lis
But they listen to you. You like them."
Dumb, oh so dumb. "And why should I talk to them?"
"Because we know," Clayton said. "They gotta listen 'cause we know."
Jeb frowned at these two cowering and trembling on the ground before him. "You lie,"
said. "You just said before you don't know nothin' about all this." His tone, as it imitated th
identical voices, was as stern and sharp as Pa's whip, was meant to sting like Pa's whip. "W
did you lie?"
 Damascus looked at the ground, but Clayton said, "That's 'cause we was afraid to say th
truth." With good reason, Jeb thought. The crowd was almost on them.
"Five minutes," Clayton said. "Make 'em stop just five minutes. We got somethin' to say
Jeb considered this.
"Five minutes," Clayton said again. "Then they can do what they want."
Jeb put up a hand, signaling the people, and they shuffled to a stop, all of them. It was
surprising, the force that his hand had upon them: It was like lightning. Not hours before, the
had been out to get him. Go figure. He knew these people, and yet he did not know them. Fi
minutes earlier he could have picked anyone out of that crowd, but now they seem as blurre
and indistinguishable as the features on the two black men.
Indulgence, Jeb thought, and: I seem to have the power. "They want five minutes," he sa
from the slight rise on which they stood. "Give them five minutes." Why not? What was
planned could wait. He felt the power in him now, a strange and mighty power. They had th
rest of the night and tomorrow night and tomorrow night and all of the fires of the volcano,
once Clayton and Damascus had been dispatched, everyone would again be left with the
horror, the fire, the unleashed, consuming serpent of dislocation and despair. Why not have
something then to look forward to instead of something that had already taken place, even if
was for another five minutes?
"Okay," he said to them again, feeling the power. "Listen to them," he said to the crowd
And smiled for the first time since the volcano had come. His hand was still high, and he
brought the other up with it, gesticulated like Reverend Smith had when he said he had seen
holy fire. "Stop! Wait!"
The people, his townspeople who had come out here to kill, looked at one another,
confused. Hiram Monroe was brandishing a charred branch; old Franklin Wallace was shak
a fist. Soon they would be roaring. Reverend Smith would be preaching now if they hadn't
taken care of him last week, calling him a false prophet. That had been the first lynching.
"Let them speak," Jeb said again. "Five minutes. Then you can do what you want."
The crowd bellowed. Hiram Monroe cursed. But then a convulsion passed through them
like a sigh, and they were still standing there, the gap between the three of them and the cro
unbreached. "Now," Jeb said to Clayton. "You'd better have your say right now."
Clayton stood slowly, stretching, tilted, pulled a Bible from his jacket and started to rea
"And there were voices, and thunderings and lightnings, and an earthquake, and there
followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the Earth, and the third
of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up, a great mountain burning with fire."
The Book of Revelation. Pa had used to read it to him on those nights, long nights in fro
of the fire, Mama's needles poking in and out of the fabric, Pa's voice sonorous like it got
before his rage, then terrifying in the flickering shadows. Clayton's voice had become sono
too and wait, this wasn't supposed to happen. Something had changed. Gone was the whisp
the simpering, sniveling dialect of ingratiation.
"And the third part of the ships were destroyed, and there fell a great star from heaven,