"Ellen Datlow - SciFiction Originals vol.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Datlow Ellen)

SciFiction Originals
Vol. 1
Edited by Ellen Datlow

Table of Contents

Pat Cadigan and Chris Fowler: FREEING THE ANGELS ........................................... 3
James P. Blaylock: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS ................................................... 19
Jeffrey Ford: MALTHUSIANтАЩS ZOMBIE ................................................................ 28
Kristine Kathryn Rusch: CHIMERA ..................................................................... 40
Kim Newman: CASTLE IN THE DESERT ............................................................. 54
Severna Park: THE CURE FOR EVERYTHING ...................................................... 65
Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson: DUNE: NIGHTTIME SHADOWS ON OPEN SAND 74
Linda Nagata: GODDESSES .............................................................................. 84
Howard Waldrop: WINTER QUARTERS ............................................................. 132
Graham Joyce: PARTIAL ECLIPSE ................................................................... 140
A. R. Morlan: CIN├Й RIMETTATO ...................................................................... 147
Dave Hutchinson: TIR-NA-NOG ....................................................................... 168
Steven Utley: THE REAL WORLD ..................................................................... 185
Richard Bowes: FROM THE FILES OF THE TIME RANGERS .................................. 200
Robert Reed: BIRDY GIRL .............................................................................. 227
About the Authors ......................................................................................... 237
About the Editor ............................................................................................ 242
 SciFiction Originals 1
┬й 2000 by SciFi.com. All stories are also copyrighted by their respective authors.

This edition was compiled by Ted, for #bookz on UnderNet/mIRC.
 Pat Cadigan and Chris Fowler
FREEING THE ANGELS

He was standing on the sidewalk, idly flexing his brand-new arm while he waited to cross with the rest of the blowfish,
when he heard his mother's voice in his mind. Unbidden, unwished-for, apropos of nothing, it came to him: Carry on
the way you have been, Danny-boy, you be seein' angels a lot sooner than you want to. Or maybe devils. You sure
got some bad in you, boy. Watch it don't catch you out and take you down. When you go, you want to see them
angels waiting to take you in.
Danny smiled to himself sourly. Yeah, sure, Momma, thanks for the pointer. He thought of it as typical of
everything she'd given him, from the charity-shop clothes and cold junk food all the way down to the little stump and
four tiny fingers that grew out of his right shoulder, the legacy of her five years in a fertilizer production factory, now
completely covered by a brand-new arm from the Universal Prosthetics Clinic.
Maybe the sudden echo of her voice in his mind had been his simple acknowledgment that she wouldn't have
approved. Getting above yourself was one of the many deadly sins on the Momma-meter, along with whining. As in,
Stop whining about your goddamn stump, you're lucky that's all it was. I saw some of the things they took outta
women I worked with. And if you think you oughta get one of them fancy prosthetics like some jumped-up poster
child, you gettin' above yourself, boy. Way above yourself.
The sour smile deepened as the light changed. A desperate bike courier, legs pumping as if he were treading water
in a panic to keep from drowning, blew through the intersection close enough to flutter Danny's shirttail. He smoothed
it casually, enjoying the small fantasy that he'd worn completely normal and totally unremarkable shirts all his life, just
like anyone else. Not above myself, Momma-just above you. Like the man said about everyone being in the gutter and
some of us looking at the stars. It's called ambition.
He flexed the arm again. Realizing the smaller ambitions was the first step in getting the bigger ones taken care of.