"Delany, Samuel R - The Einstein Intersection 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

". . . just wanted to taste." But the gray hand retreated. Through the dusk firelight caught on a tongue sliding along a lip.
Batt handed him a plate.
Spider was served last. We waited for him to begin, though, now that the bottom of the pit was lined.

"Night . . . sand . . . and dragons," Stinky muttered. "Yeah." Which was very apt.
I had just taken my blade out to play when Spider said, "You were asking about Kid Death this morning."
"That's right." I lay the blade in my lap. "You had something to say about him?" The others quieted.
"I did the Kid a favor, once," Spider mused.
"When he was in the desert?" I asked, wondering what sort of person you would have to be to be different and doing Kid Death favors.
"When he had just come out of the desert," Spider said. "He was holed up in a town."
"What's a town? " I asked.
"You know what a village is?"
"Yeah. I came from one."
"And you know what a city is." He motioned around at the sand. "Well a village grows bigger and bigger till it becomes a town; then the town grows bigger and bigger till it becomes a city. But this was a ghost town. That means it was from a very old time, from the old people of the planet. It had stopped growing. The buildings had all broken open, sewers caved in, dead leaves fled up the streets, around the stubs of street-lamp bases; an abandoned power station, rats, snakes, department stores-these are the things that are in a town. Also the lowest, dirtiest outcasts of a dozen species who are vicious with a viciousness beyond what intelligence can conceive. Because if there were a brain behind it, they would all be luxuriant, decadent lords of evil over the whole world instead of wallowing in the junk heap of a ghost town. They are creatures you wouldn't put in a kage."

"What did you do for him? " I asked.
"I killed his father."
I frowned.
Spider picked at a tooth. "He was a detestable, three-eyed, three hundred pound worm. I know he'd murdered at least forty-six people. He tried to kill me three times while I was bumming through the town. Once with poison, once with a wrench, once with a grenade. Each time he missed and got somebody else. He'd fathered a couple of dozen, but still a good number less than he'd killed. Once, when I was on fair terms with him, he gave me one of his daughters. Butchered and dressed her himself. Fresh meat is scarce in town. He simply didn't count on one of his various kaged offspring whom he'd abandoned a thousand miles away following him up from the desert. Nor did he count on that child's being a criminal genius, psychotic, and a totally different creature. The Kid and I met up in town there where his father was living high as one could live in that dung pile. The Kid must have been about ten years old.
"I was sitting in a bar, listening to characters brag and boast, while a wrestling match was going in the corner. The loser would be dinner. Then this skinny carrottop wanders in and sits down on a pile of rags. He stared down most of the time so that you looked at those eyes of his through finer veils of gold. His skin was soap white. He watched the fight, listened to the bragging, and once made a design in the dirt with his toe. When the talk got boring, he scratched his elbow and made faces. When the stories got wild and fascinating, he froze, his fingers tied together, and head down. He listens like someone blind. When the stories were through, he walked out. Then someone whispered, That was Kid Death! and everybody got quiet. He already had quite a reputation."
Green-eye had moved a little closer to me. There was a chill over the City.
"A little later while I was taking a walk outside," Spider went on, "I saw him swimming in the lake of the Town Park.
Hey, Spider-man, he called me from the water.
I walked over and squatted by the pool's edge, Hi, kid.
You gotta kill my old man for me. He reached from the lake and grabbed my ankle. I tried to pull away. The Kid leaned back till his face was under water, and bubbled, You gotta do me this little favor, Spider. You have to.
A leaf stuck to his arm. If you say so, Kid.
He stood up in the water now, hair lank down his face, scrawny, white, and wet. I say so.
Mind if I ask why? I pushed the hair off his forehead. I wanted to see if he was real: cold fingers on my ankle; wet hair under my hand.
He smiled, ingenuous as a corpse. I don't mind. His lips, nipples, the cuticles over his claws were shriveled. There's a whole lot of hate left on this world, Spiderman. The stronger you are, the more receptive you are to the memories that haunt these mountains, these rivers, seas and jungles. And I'm strong! Oh, we're not human, Spider. Life and death, the real and the irrational aren't the same as they were for the poor race who willed us this world. They tell us young people, they even told me, that before our parents' parents came here, we were not concerned with love, life, matter and motion. But we have taken a new home, and we have to exhaust the past before we can finish with the present. We have to live out the human if we are to move on to our own future. The past terrifies me. That's why I must kill it-why you must kill him for me.
Are you so tied up with their past, Kid?
He nodded. Untie me, Spider.
What happens if I don't?
He shrugged. I'll have to kill you-all. He sighed. Under the sea it's so silent . . . so silent, Spider. He whispered, Kill him!
Where is he?
He's waddling along the street while the moonlit gnats make dust around his head, his heel sliding in the trickle of water along the gutter that runs from under the old church wall; he stops and leans, panting, against the moss-
He's dead, I said. I opened my eyes. I dislodged a slab of concrete from the beams, so that it slid down-
See you around sometime. The Kid grinned and pushed backward into the pool. Thanks. Maybe I'll be able to do something for you someday, Spider.
Maybe you will, I said. He sank in the silvered scum. I went back to the bar. They were roasting dinner."
After a while I said, "You must have lived in town a fair while."
"Longer than I'd like to admit," Spider said. "If you call it living." He sat up and glanced around the fire. "Lobey, Green-eye, you two circle the herd for the first watch. In three hours wake Knife and Stinky. Me and Batt will take the last shift."
Green-eye rose beside me. I stood too as the others made ready to sleep. My Mount was dozing. The moon was up. Ghost lights ran on the humped spines of the beasts. Sore-legged, stiff-armed, I climbed a-back My Mount and with

Green-eye began to circle the herd. I swung the whip against my shin as we rode. "How do they look to you?"
I didn't expect an answer. But Green-eye rubbed his stomach with a grimy hand.
"Hungry? Yeah, I guess they are in all this sand." I watched the slender, dirty youngster sway behind the scaled hump. "Where are you from?" I asked.
He smiled quickly at me.
I was born of a lonely mother with neither father nor sister nor brother.
I looked up surprised.
At the waters she waits for me
my mother, my mother at Branning-at-sea,