"Jack Williamson - The Humanoids" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

easily relaxed in a faded shirt, open at the collar, and shapeless, ancient slacks, he answered her
shy smile with a sympathetic grin, and turned to the sergeant inquiringly.
"Miss Jane Carter," the sergeant said. "To see Dr. Forester."
Ironsmith tapped the bowl of his underslung brier against the bicycle frame, and stood
absently testing its temperature with his finger tips. Seeing her breathless urgency, he shook his
head with a quick regret.
"You'd have to be at least a general." His voice was soft and kindly. "Wouldn't anybody else
do at all?"
"Nobody," she said firmly. "And it's awful important."
"I'm sure," Ironsmith agreed. "And what might it be about?"
Her great, limpid eyes stared beyond him. Her thin blue lips moved silently, and then she
seemed to listen.
 "I'm not to say," she told Ironsmith. "Except it's something Mr. White says is going to
happen right away. Something awful bad! That's why he wants to warn Dr. Forester."
Ironsmith peered beyond her, at the long empty road winding down to the desert and
stretching into the shimmering distance toward Salt City. His puzzled eyes saw the
uncomfortable shifting of her bare, chapped feet, and concern sobered him.
"Tell me, Jane - where did you leave your folks?"
"I don't have no folks," she said gravely. "I never had any folks, and the cops shut me up in a
big dark house with had smells and iron on the windows. But I'm all right now." She
brightened. "Mr. White took me out through the walls, and he says I don't have to go back."
Ironsmith rubbed his smooth chin, thoughtfully.
"Dr. Forester is pretty hard to see," he told her. "But maybe we can manage something.
Suppose we go over to the cafeteria, and eat a dish of ice cream while we talk about it?" He
looked at the sergeant. "I'll see her back to the gate."
She shook her head, reluctantly.
"Aren't you hungry?" Ironsmith urged. "They've got four flavors."
"Thank you." He could see the eager longing in her wet black eyes, but she stepped back
firmly. "Yes, I'm getting awful hungry. But Mr. White says I haven't time to eat."
Turning, she started away from the gate. Beyond her the black empty road was a narrow
shelf blasted into the dark basalt pillars of the mountain, and the nearest haven was that dark
smudge already rippling under the morning sun on the far horizon.
"Wait, Jane!" he called anxiously. "Where're you going?"
"Back to Mr. White." She paused, gulping. "So he can tell me how to find Dr. Forester. But
I'm awful sorry about that ice cream."
Pushing the card deeper in her pocket, she ran on down the narrow pavement. Watching the
way she tried to step in the cooler shade beneath the cliff, Ironsmith felt an increasing
solicitude. She seemed a daughter of want. Hunger had made her body too small for her head,
and the stoop of her shoulders gave her almost the look of a little old woman. Yet he felt more
puzzlement than pity. He didn't understand her odd way of listening at nothing, or her solemn
determination to see Forester. He began to wish he had tried to break red tape enough to get her
a pass.
In a moment, her fluttering yellow dress was gone beyond the first dark jutting angle of the
mountain. He got astride his bicycle to go back to work, and then something stopped him. He
waited, watching a lower curve of the road that lay in view beyond, but she didn't come in sight
again.
"Let me out," he told the sergeant suddenly. "A homeless kid, with that crazy notion about a
message for Dr. Forester - we can't just let her run away in the desert. I'm going to bring her in
and try to get Forester to see her. I'll be responsible."
He rode down around the curve, and on for a mile beyond. He didn't find Jane Carter.