"Pohl, Frederik - Spending a Day at the Lottery Fair" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pohl Frederick)

and I seem to have lost our tour, and your children kindly helped us look for
it.
"it's all right, Dad, Simon put in swiftly. "They're on this foreign tour, see,
and everything's free for them anyway. Dad? Why can't we get on a tour and have
everything free?
"We're Americans, his father explained, smiling tentatively at the tall
English-looking woman and the tubby, cheerful Japanese-he decided that they
didn't look like depraved child molesters. "You have to be an international
tourist to get these unlimited tickets. And I bet they cost quite a lot of
money, don't they? he appealed to the man, who smiled and shrugged and looked at
the woman.
"Mr. Katsubishi doesn't speak English very well, she apologized. "I'm Rachel
Millay. Mrs. Millay, that is, although my dear husband left us some years ago.
She glanced about in humorous distress. "I don't suppose you've seen a tour
leader carrying a green and violet flag with a cross of St. Andrew on it?
Since Randolph Baxter had no idea what a cross of St. Andrew looked like, it was
hard to say. In any case, there were at least twenty tour parties in sight, each
with its own individual pennant or standard, trudging in determined merriment
toward the pavilions, the rides, or the refreshment stands. "I'm afraid not, he
began, and then paused as his wife clutched his arm. The P.A. system crackled,
and the winners of the first drawing were announced.
Neither of the Baxters was among them. "Well, there are six more drawings, said
Millicent bravely, not adding that there were also six more sets of raffle
tickets to buy if they wanted any hope of winning one of them. Her husband
smiled cheerfully at the children.
"What's it to be? he asked generously. "The life exhibit? The concert-
"We already voted, Dad, cried Emma, his elder daughter. "It's the animals!
"No, the stiffs!" yelled her baby sister.
"The old autos, cried Simon. "Anyway, there won't be any stiffs there until
later, not to speak of!
Baxter smiled indulgently at the foreigners. "Children, he explained. "Well, I
do hope you find your group. And he led the way to the first democratically
selected adventure of the day, the space exhibit.
Baxter had always had a nostalgic fondness for space, and this was a pretty fine
exhibit, harking back to the olden, golden days when human beings could spare
enough energy and resources to send their people and probes out toward the
distant worlds. Even the kids liked it. It was lavish with animated 3-D displays
showing a human being walking around on the surface of the Moon, and a
spacecraft slipping through the rings of Saturn, and even a probe, though not an
American one, hustling after Halley's Comet to take its picture.
But Randolph Baxter had some difficulty in concentrating on the pleasure of the
display at first because, as they were getting their tickets, the tall, smiling
black man just ahead of him in line put his arm into the admissions cuff, looked
startled, withdrew his arm, started to speak, and fell over on the ground, his
eyes open and staring, it seemed, right into Randolph Baxter's.
When you have a wife and three kids and no job, living on welfare, never
thinking about tomorrow because you know there isn't going to be anything in
tomorrow worth thinking about, a day's outing for the whole family is an event
to be treasured. No matter what the price-especially if the price isn't in
money. So the Baxter family did it all. They visited six national pavilions,