The Best of L. Sprague de Camp
- Автор: Де Камп Лайон Спрэг
- Год: 1978
- Язык: английский
- Год: Del Rey / Ballantine
- ISBN: 0-345-25474-0
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Best of L. Sprague de Camp». Краткое содержание книги:
So it came to pass that, three weeks later, Earl Delacroix surprised those who knew his penurious habits by installing a new dance floor in The Pines. He surprised them somewhat less by hiring a luscious, red-haired girl as hostess. He himself was not too pleased over that innovation. But Pringle had brought the girl in personally and given her the strongest recommendation. Delacroix's mental eyebrows had gone up a bit. Hadn't Pringle's wife left him a while before? Oh, well, it was none of his business. If Pringle, who owned most of the town, wanted a—friend—employed, it was a good idea to employ the friend, without asking too many questions.
Delacroix had been particularly intrigued when the girl gave her name as Aceria; then, when he asked her full name, a whispered consultation between the girl and Pringle produced the surname of Jones. Jones, eh? Heh, heh.
Since then, Aceria has worked at The Pines. For appearance's sake, she has a room in the boarding house next door. But its bed is never slept in. Her landlady does not know that, every night, Aceria returns to the restaurant. It is dark then, and nobody is there to see her do whatever she does to merge herself with the floorboards. Probably she just fades out of sight. On these nocturnal trips, she always wears her old green dress. Or rather, it was green, but with the coming of fall it gradually turned a rich orange-yellow.
She dances divinely, and the local boys like her but find her a little odd. For instance, sooner or later she asks every acquaintance whether he knows of a place where a Norway maple grows. She is still asking, and if you know of one I am sure she would be grateful if you would inform her...
THE RELUCTANT SHAMAN
ONE FINE JULY day, a tourist took his small boy into a shop in Gahato, New York. The sign over the shop read:
CHIEF SOARING TURTLE
Indian Bead-Work—Pottery
Inside, a stocky, copper-colored man stood amidst a litter of burnt-leather cushions, Navajo blankets made in Connecticut, and similar truck.
"Have you got a small bow-and-arrow outfit?" the tourist asked.
"Ugh," said the Indian. He rummaged and produced a small bow and six arrows with rubber knobs for heads.
"Are you a real Indian?" the boy asked.
"Ugh. Sure. Heap big chief."
"Where are your feathers?"
"Put away. Only wear um for war-dance."
The tourist paid and started out. At that instant, a copper-colored boy of fifteen years entered from the back.
"Hey, Pop, one of the kittens just et the other!" he called loudly.
The Indian lost his barbaric impassiveness. "What? Jeepers Cripus, what kind of mink farmer do you call yourself? I told you to shift 'em to separate cages yesterday, before they began to fight!"
"I'm sorry, Pop. I guess I forgot."
"You'd better be sorry. That be good money throwed down the sewer."
The tourist's car door slammed, and as the car moved off, the thin voice of the tourist's little boy was wafted back:
"He talks just like anybody else. He don't sound like a real Indian to me."
But Virgil Hathaway, alias Chief Soaring Turtle, was a real Indian. He was a Penobscot from Maine, forty-six years old, a high-school graduate, and—except that he did not bathe as often as some people thought he should— a model citizen.
Shortly after the departure of the tourist, another man came in. This visitor had Hathaway's distinctive muddy coloring and Mongoloid features, though he was fatter, shorter, and older than Hathaway.
"Morning," he said. "You're Virgil Hathaway, ain't-cha?"
"That's who I be, mister."
The man smiled so that his eyes disappeared in fat. "Pleased to know you, Mr. Hathaway. I'm Charlie Catfish, of the Senecas."
"That so? Glad to know you, Mr. Catfish. How about stopping over for some grub?"
"Thanks, but the folks want to make Blue Mountain Lake for lunch. Tell you what you can do. I got eight stone throwers with me. They was let come up here providing they behaved. I got enough to do without dragging them all over, so if you don't mind I'll leave 'em in your charge."
"Stone throwers?" repeated Hathaway blankly.
"You know, Gahunga. You can handle 'em even though you're Algonquin, being as you're a descendant of Dekanawida."
"I be what?"
"A descendant of Hiawatha's partner. We keep track—" A horn blast interrupted him. "Sorry, Mr. Hathaway, gotta go. You won't have no trouble." And the fat Indian was gone.
Hathaway was left puzzled and uneasy. It was nice to be descended from Dekanawida, the great Huron chief and cofounder of the Iroquois League. But what were Gahunga? His smattering of the Iroquoian dialects included no such term.
Then there was another customer, and after her Harvey Pringle lounged in wearing a sport shirt that showed off his strength and beauty.
"Hi, Virgil," he drawled. "How's every little thing?"
"Pretty good, considering." Hathaway felt a sudden urge to bring his accounts up to date. Young Pringle could waste more time in one hour than most men could in three.
"I finished my ragweed pulling for today." "Huh?" said Hathaway.
"Yeah. The old man got shirty again about my not doing anything. I said, why take a job away from some poor guy that needs it? So I appointed myself the county's one-man ragweed committee. I pull the stuff up for one hour a day, heh-heh! Babs been in?"
"No," replied Hathaway.
"Oh, well, she knows where to find me." Harvey Pringle yawned and sauntered out. Hathaway wondered what Barbara Scott could see in that useless hulk. Then he listened to the noise.
It was like a quick, faint drumming, queerly muffled, as though the drum were half full of water. Hathaway looked out the screen-door; no parade. Timothy weeds nodded peacefully in the breeze, and from the Moose River came the faint scream of old man Pringle's sawmill.
The noise seemed to be behind Hathaway, in the shop, like the sound of a small Delco plant in the cellar. The noise increased. It waxed, and eight figures materialized on the rug. They looked like Iroquois warriors two feet tall, complete with moccasins, buckskin leggings, and scalps shaven except for stiff crests on the crown. One squatted and tapped a three-inch drum. The other seven circled around him, occasionally giving the loon cry by slapping the hand against the mouth while uttering a long, shrill yell.
"Hey!" barked Hathaway. The drumming stopped. "Who the devil be you?"
The drummer spoke:
"Adenlozlakstengen agoiyo—"
"Whoa! Don't you speak English?"
"Ayuh, mister. I thought if you was a medicine man, you'd talk Iroquois—"
"If I was what?"
"Medicine man. Charlie said he was gonna leave us with one while he went to Canada." "Be you the stone throwers?"
"Ayuh. I'm chief, name of Gaga, from Cattaraugus County. Anything you want us to do?"
"Yeah. Just disappear for a while." The Gahunga disappeared. Hathaway thought that Charlie Catfish had played a dirty trick on him, to spring these aboriginal spooks without explanation.
He brightened when Barbara Scott entered, trim, dark, and energetic. Hathaway approved of energy in other people.
"Have you seen Harvey, Virgil?" she asked. "I had a lunch date with him."
"Uh-huh," said Hathaway. "Prob'ly sleeping on somebody's lawn."
Miss Scott stiffened. "You're as bad as the rest, Virgil. Nobody's fair to poor Harvey."
"Forget it," said Hathaway with a helpless motion of his hands. When a girl toward whom you felt a fatherly affection seemed bent on marrying the worthless son of the town's leading businessman, who was also your landlord, there wasn't much a moderate man could do. "You still be having that séance tomorrow night?"