"Baker, Kage - Company 4 The Graveyard Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)

"Hi," he said. There was a violent flapping of wings from the room beyond, and a raven suddenly landed on his shoulder. He reached up swiftly and closed its beak between his thumb and forefinger.
"Whoa." Joseph stepped back, laughing. "Is that one of the cast members still hanging around?"
"No," said the man with a trace of sullenness. "This is just Raven. You guys understand that birds never, ever really behave that way, right? It was just a horror movie. Ravens never hurt mortals, and neither do seagulls, for that matter."
"Well, sure, but it's still a great movie." Joseph thrust out his hand. "Hi. I'm Joseph and this is Lewis. We came to see the set, butЧsay, what is a smew, anyway?"
"I'm Juan Bautista. Mergellus albellus, it's a Eurasian merganser, and they're only accidental here, but we have a mated pair! Do you have any idea how rare that is?" said Juan Bautista, shaking hands.
"Amazing," said Joseph. "So. Can we see the house?"
"All right," sighed Juan Bautista, stepping back from the door. Then he stopped, staring at Joseph. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
"Gee, I suppose it's possible. I get around a lot," said Joseph. "Come on, I want to see the fireplace where the sparrows attacked."
There wasn't really much to see, since no attempt had been made to reproduce any of the film's furnishings. Juan showed them through the rooms anyway and recited a few film facts for their edification: that Hitchcock had thrown a lot of innocent helpless birds at Tippi Hedren, and that the schoolhouse where the ravens massed for their completely out-of-character attack was now a private residence and thought to be haunted, though not by Suzanne Pleshette. The raven clacked its beak derisively.
"Well, isn't that just fascinating," said Lewis.
"Want to go see the smews now?"
"Great," said Joseph.
A smew looked like a fat little black-and-white duck with a crest, though Juan Bautista insisted a merganser wasn't a duck. They admired one paddling about on a reedy backwater for a few minutes, then started back to the house.
"I guess you don't get into the city much," said Joseph as they crossed the lawn.
"Me? No. What do you guys do?"
"Lewis here works for the studios in HollywoodЧ" Juan Bautista turned to stare at him, impressed. "Dealing in rare research stuff and old scripts."
"I was stationed in Hollywood once," said Juan Bautista. "It wasn't there yet, though, so I never got to see any movie stars."
"Yeah, that's life in the service, isn't it?" Joseph shook his head ruefully. "I don't see many in my line of work, either. I work forЧSay, I've just remembered, I have that helmet in the car!"
"That's right, you do," said Lewis. "Let's show him."
Juan Bautista looked from one to the other. "What?"
"You'll love this. It's so cool." Joseph ran to the Lexus and popped the trunk.
"He was showing me only yesterday," Lewis told Juan Bautista. "No end of fun, virtual reality stuff."
Juan Bautista's eyes lit up. "The graphics are still pretty crappy, but I understand they're getting better."
"Wait'll you see this." Joseph chortled, digging the white crate out of the trunk. "Come on, let's take it in the house. It's a prototype. You can try it out."
"You work for those guys?" Juan Bautista recognized the logo on the box. "Wow."
"Yeah, but I'm never involved in the movies themselves." Joseph pushed the door open and set the box down. "Right now I'm a salesman for their cybernetic entertainment division. There are certain developments Dr. Zeus wants monitored. You know." He lifted out the helmet. "Just sit down and get comfortable."
"Okay." Juan Bautista handed the raven off to a perchЧit gronked and protestedЧand took a seat on his couch. Joseph stepped close and placed the helmet carefully on Juan Bautista's head. Lewis winced and retreated a few paces. The raven cocked its head to look at him and looked back at Juan Bautista uneasily.
"Here we go!" Joseph took a small control out of his pocket and inserted a minidisc. "This is the sampler. My favorite's the walk through Stonehenge, it's the first one on the program. Check it out." He thumbed the control and stepped well away from the couch. The raven ducked its head and began to flutter its wings, crying.
"Oh, shut up, bird. Hey, this is really something," said Juan Bautista muffledly. "It's a lot better than the other stuff IЧow!"
He began to fumble with the helmet. The raven flew off its perch and went straight for Joseph's eyes, screaming, "Get it off him! Get it off him right now!"
Joseph dropped the control to defend himself and got a grip around the raven's wings, trapping them. He held it out at arm's length. Juan Bautista pushed off the helmet, panting. There was a moment of silence.
"Did that bird just talk?" asked Lewis at last.
"UhЧsure. Ravens can be taught to talk, you know," said Juan Bautista, in a frantically reasonable voice. "Just like parrots. All the Corvidae are really intelligent."
"Get it off him, get it off him right now," said the raven rather lamely. "Polly wants a cracker, awk, awk, awk."
"Nice try," said Joseph, glaring at it. "Why don't you do the nevermore bit next?"
"I hate that stupid poem," said the raven. Juan Bautista groaned and slid down on the couch. "I'm sorry, Dad," it added contritely.
Joseph grinned unpleasantly. Lewis was reminded that Joseph had worked for the Spanish Inquisition.
"Well, well," he chuckled. "You're not just any birdbrain, are you? Somebody's done an augmentation job on you. Boy, that's really illegal. The Company wouldn't be at all happy if they found out. I wonder who could have done such a thing?"
"Dad didn't do it!" shrieked the raven. "It was somebody else. Not Dad."
"Shut up," said Juan Bautista desperately.
"Oh, pal, have we ever got your ass in a sling," Joseph said. "To say nothing of your bird in my hand. But, you know what? This is your lucky day. The Company won't ever find out, because that helmet just shorted out your automatic datalink."
"For a period of twenty-four hours," Lewis added.
Juan Bautista looked from one to the other, then ran his self-diagnostic. "My God, it has," he said after a moment. He scowled at Joseph. "Okay, what's going on? Who are you guys? I'm sure I know you from somewhere."
"Don't worry. We just needed to ask you some questions in private, and the helmet was the only way to do it," Lewis assured him.
"Let Raven go, and maybe I'll talk to you," Juan Bautista said.
"Okay, Raven, are you augmented enough to know what'll happen to you if you go after me again?" Joseph asked her.
"I'll be good," the raven snarled. Juan Bautista put out his hand and she went to him, scurrying up his arm to busy herself with grooming his hair through the whole of the following conversation.
"Look, there's no need for unpleasantness. We just want some information you might have about something that happened to a friend of ours," said Lewis.
"You don't tell anybody about this conversation," said Joseph, pulling up a chair, "and we won't tell anybody about your little friend. A deal? And if there are any inquiries about why you weren't transmitting for twenty-four hours, no problem." Joseph held up his index finger. "We came here to see the Hitchcock set, got to talking, I persuaded you to try on the helmet, and it zapped you. You can tell it exactly as it happened. Then Lewis and I looked at each other and exclaimed, 'My gosh, it must have been the helmet all along. It's defective.' I apologized, and we promised to take it apart tomorrow to see what's wrong with it, which I'm going to anyway, so it's not even a lie. Okay? That's what you tell any security tech who conies to check on you. If they ask us, we'll corroborate, and everybody's happy."
"Do you mind if I ask you a question, though?" Lewis stepped closer. "How did you manage to do the augmentation without being found out?"