"Jean and Jeff Sutton - The Boy Who Had The Power" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sutton Jean and Jeff)

The Boy Who Had The Power -- Jean and Jeff Sutton -- (1971)

(Version 2002.09.29 -- Done)


For Erin and Michael Patrick Mahanay


1

SPRAWLED COMFORTABLY in the lush green panda grass, Jedro idly watched
the big yellow sun Klore slide downward toward the rim of the Ullan Hills. Its
warmth felt good. Far behind it, small and bright in the yellow-blue sky,
raced the small orange sun Bergon. Once Klore fell below the horizon, Bergon
would splash the darkening hills with its dusky orange light.
Jedro lazily reached out to scratch the ear of a browsing gran, his
thoughts languid. He seldom wondered that most of his days and nights, for as
long as he could remember, had been spent tending the sleek woolly animals
that grazed the rolling hills. He could scarcely conceive that life, at least
his own, could be much different.
Neither did he know that his memory cells were blocked.
Yet occasionally in the quiet of night, when Klore and Bergon were down
and the sky was agleam with stars, strange things nibbled at his mind --
unidentifiable things which crouched just beyond the borders of his awareness
so that he never quite managed to give them shape or substance. But he could
remember his life quite clearly, all the way back to that morning, some four
years earlier, when he had awakened in the attic room of Oscar Krant's ranch
house. That far he could remember, but no further. Beyond that morning was a
nothingness.
He had awakened, not knowing who or where he was -- a small boy staring
blankly at a dirty ceiling, the scarred and grimy walls that hemmed him in,
the tattered curtains that hung limply over the single narrow window. A stale,
musky odor touched his nostrils. Lying there, he wondered without wondering,
his mind grappling with an awesome vacuum. It was like gazing into a curious
emptiness that extended back and back and back.
Who am I? The question came unbidden, bringing a moment of stark terror.
His body shook convulsively. He gazed for a long moment at the pale light
filtering through the window before rising stealthily to pull aside the dingy
curtain. Trees, bushes, low rolling hills limned against a strange yellow-
orange horizon -- he knew what he was seeing, knew the names of most of the
objects that met his eyes, but with no comprehension of the source of his
knowledge. Neither could he remember ever having seen such a strange
landscape. That bizarre yellow-orange light on the horizon...He trembled and
moved his gaze.
His eyes settled on a dilapidated barn fronting a series of large fenced
fields that had been designed to hold what? He didn't know, for the fields
were empty. Trampled mud around a nearby water hole suggested that the fenced
areas had held animals of some kind.
He let his gaze wander. A rutted dirt road winding off into the
distance, an old wagon with a broken wheel, a small vegetable garden overgrown