Читать книгу Classics fantasy – 5 - A. Belyaev - Страница 24

Johnson in impatience left a cabin.

Air was warm. Having thrown off a fur coat, Johnson ran to a lodge. Крукс hardly kept up with it.

There was a fine autumn evening. The setting sun brightly lit large red apples on garden apple-trees.

– However – with surprise Johnson said – really I overslept till fall?

He ran up to a fencing of a garden and saw the son and the wife. Little Samuel sat among autumn flowers and with laughter threw mother’s apples. Frederica’s face was not visible behind apple-tree branches.

– Samuel! Frederica! – joyfully Johnson cried and, having jumped through a low fencing, ran through beds towards to the wife and the son.

But the kid instead of rushing towards to the father, began to cry, having taken away the approaching Johnson, and in a fright rushed to mother.

Johnson stopped and suddenly uvidat the mistake: it were not Samuel and Frederica though the boy very much resembled his son. Young mother left because of a tree. It was one years with Frederica, same light and ruddy. But hair were more dark. Of course, it is not Frederica! And as soon as he could be mistaken! Possibly, it is one of neighbors or Frederica’s girlfriends.

Johnson slowly approached and bowed. The young woman expectantly looked at it.

– Forgive, I, apparently, frightened your son – he told, getting accustomed to the child and being surprised to similarity with Itself – ale. – Frederica of the house?

– What Frederica? – the woman asked.

– Frederica Johnson, my wife!

– Whether you were mistaken the address? – the woman answered. – Frederica is not here…

– Pretty business! That I was mistaken in the address of own house!

– Your house?.

– And whose? – This confused woman began to irritate Johnson.

On a threshold of a lodge the young man of years of thirty three attracted obviously, seemed noise of voices.

– In what business, Elaine? – he asked, without descending from a step of a porch and popykhivy a short tube.

– Business is in that – Johnson answered that during my absence here, obviously, there were some changes the question turned not to it – … Others lodged in my house…

– In your house? – derisively the young man standing on a porch asked.

– Yes, in my house! – Johnson answered, having waved a hand on the cottage.

– With whom I have honor to speak? – the young man asked.

– I am Bendzhemin Johnson!

– Bendzhemin Johnson? – the young man asked again and burst out laughing. You hear, Elaine? – he addressed the woman. – One more Bendzhemin Johnson and owner of this cottage!

– Allow to assure you – suitable Kruks suddenly put in a ward – that before you really Bendzhemin Johnson. – And he pointed to Johnson by a hand.

– It becomes entertaining. And with itself dragged the witness! Allow also you to tell that your joke is unsuccessful. Thirty three years I was Bendzhemin Johnson who was born in this house and its owner, and now you want to convince me that the owner of the house, Bendzhemin Johnson, this young man!

– I not only want, but also I hope to convince you of it if you allow to come into the house and to explain you some circumstances, obviously to unknown to you.

Крукс said so convincingly that the young man, having thought a little, invited him and Johnson to the house.

With nervousness Johnson entered the house which left so recently. He still hoped to meet on the usual place, at a fireplace, Frederica and the son playing at her legs on a floor. But they were not there…

With greedy curiosity Johnson threw the room in which carried out so many joyful and bitter minutes.

All furniture was unfamiliar, alien to it.

Only over a fireplace still painted plates Elizabethan times – a family jewelry Dzhonsonov hung.

And at a fireplace in a deep chair the gray-haired, decrepit old man with the legs wrapped in a plaid, despite warm day sat. The old man took entered an unfriendly view.

– The father – addressed the young man the old man – these people claim that one of them Bendzhemin Johnson and the owner of the house. Whether you wish to catch one more sonny?

– Bendzhemin Johnson – the old man proshamkat, examining Kruks – so called my father… but he died in Greenland long ago, in this damned glacier where froze people!.

– Allow me to tell how there was a business – Kruks answered. – First of all, Johnson not I, and here it. I Kruks. Scientist, historian.

And, addressing the old man, it began the story:

– To you was if I am not mistaken, about two years, when your father, Bendzhemin Johnson, fell into a trap the coalman Gilbert and decided to subject himself to «freezing» to save you and your mother from starvation during unemployment. Also many other suffered much and desperate family workers followed Johnson’s example soon. Being empty Konservatorium on the northwest coast of Greenland quickly was filled with bodies of the frozen workers. But Carlson and Gilbert were mistaken in the calculations.

Freezing of workers did not solve the crisis which endured the English capitalism. Even on the contrary: it only aggravated the inflamed passions of class fight. The most firm workers were revolted with «the frozen human flesh» as they called application of anabiosis to «conservation» of the unemployed, and used freezing as propaganda means. Revolution broke out. Group of the armed workers, having captured airplanes, went to Greenland with the purpose to recover the brothers who were dead asleep and to put them in ranks of fighting.

Then Carlson and Gilbert, wishing to anticipate events, gave on radio the order to the servants in Greenland to blow up Konservatorium, hoping to explain this crime with accident.

The radiotelegram was intercepted, both Carlson and Gilbert incurred deserved punishment. However radio waves fly quicker than any airplane. And when pilots went down at the purpose of the flight, they found the abysses only gaping, smoking, fragments of constructions and pieces of frozen human meat. It was succeeded to dig out several untouched accident of bodies, but also these died from too bystry temperature increase or maybe from suffocation. Works were at a loss the fact that plans underground телохранилищ disappeared. It was necessary only to put a monument over this sad place. There passed seventy three years…

Johnson involuntarily screamed.

– And not so long ago, studying history of our revolution on archival materials, I found Gilbert’s statement with a request for permission in archive of one of the former ministries to it to construct Konservatorium for conservation of the unemployed. Gilbert in detail and eloquently wrote about what benefit can be derived from this means in «business an izzhitiya of periodic crises and related working disorders». The minister’s hand on this statement wrote the instructions: «Of course, it is better if they peacefully rest, than to revolt to resolve…»

But the most interesting was the fact that the plan of mines was enclosed to Gilbert’s application. And in this plan my attention was drawn by one mine going far aside from the general network. I do not know by what reasons builders of mines were guided, laying this gallery. I was interested in another: in this mine there could be bodies which are not injured by accident. I immediately reported about it to our government. The special expedition was equipped. Started excavation. After several weeks of unsuccessful searches we managed to open an entrance to this mine. It was almost not touched, and we went to its depth.

The terrible show was presented to our eyes. Along a long corridor in walls niches in three ranks were arranged, and in them bodies lay. Closer to an entrance, obviously, hot air got, at explosion it killed the people lying in anabiosis at once. Closer to the middle of mines temperature, probably, increased more slowly, and several workers recovered, but they probably died from suffocation, hunger or cold. Their distorted persons and convulsively brought together members spoke about agonal sufferings.

At last in depth of the mine, behind the covered turn, there was equal cold temperature. Here we found only three bodies, other niches were empty. With all precautions we tried to recover them. And we managed it.

The famous astronomer Eduard Lesley whose death was mourned by all scientific world, the second – the poet Mere and the third – Bendzhemin Johnson who is just brought by me here on the airplane was the first of them… If my words are not enough, in confirmation of them I can provide indisputable proofs. I terminated!

All sat silently, struck with the story. At last Johnson heaved a deep sigh and told:

– Means, I overslept seventy three years? Why you did not tell me about it at once? – he addressed reproachfully Kruks.

– My dear, I was afraid to subject you to too strong shock after your awakening.

– Seventy three years!. – in thought Johnson spoke. – What at us now year?

– August, one thousand nine hundred ninety eighth.

– Then I was twenty five years old, so now to me ninety eight…

– But biologically remained to you twenty five – Kruks answered – as all your vital processes were suspended while you lay in a condition of anabiosis.

– But Frederica, Frederik!. – with melancholy Johnson exclaimed.

– Alas, it is absent long ago! – told Kruks.

– My mother died thirty years ago – the old man creaked.

– Here so piece! – the young man exclaimed. And, addressing Johnson, he told: – Then that you my grandfather! You are younger than me, you have a seventy-five-year-old son!.

It seemed to Johnson that he raves. He carried out by a palm on the forehead.

– Yes… son! Samuel! My little Samuel is this old man! Frederica is absent… You – my grandson – addressed he the to the namesake to Bendzhemin – and that woman and the child?.

– My wife and son…

– Your son… Means, my great-grandson! It at the same age at what I left my little Samuel!

Johnson’s thought refused to perceive that this decrepit old man also is his son… The old man the son also could not recognize in young, blossoming, as the twenty-fifth anniversary to the young man of the father…

And they sat confused, in awkward silence looking at each other…