"Paul Di Filippo - Jack Neck and the Worry Bird" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)
Worry Bird
a short story by Paul
Di Filippo
On the western edge of putty-colored Drudge City, in the neighborhood of the Stoltz Hypobiological
Refinery ("The lowest form of intelligent life--the highest form of dumb matter!"), not far from Newspaper
Park and Boris Crocodile's Beanery and Caustics Bar--both within a knucklebone's throw of the
crapulent, crepitant Isinglass River--lived mawkly old Jack Neck, along with his bat-winged and
shark-toothed bonedog, Motherway.
Jack Neck was retired now, and mighty glad of it. He'd put in many a lugubrious lustrum at Krespo's
Mangum Exordium, stirring the slorq vats, cleaning the lard filters, sweeping up the escaped tiddles.
Plenty of work for any man's lifetime. Jack had busted his hump like a shemp to earn his current pension
(the hump was just now recovering; it didn't wander so bad like it used to), and Jack knew that unlike the
lazy young and fecund time-eaters and space-sprawlers whom he shared his cheapjack building with, he
truly deserved his union stipend, all 500 crones per moon (except once a year, during the Short
Thirteenth, when he only got 495). Why, it had taken him a whole year of retirement just to forget the
sound of the tiddles crying out for mercy. Deadly core-piercing, that noise was, by Saint Fistula's Nose!
But now, having survived the rigors of the Exordium (not all his buddies had lived to claim their Get-gone
Get-by; why, his pal Slam Slap could still be seen as a screaming bas-relief in the floor tiles of Chamber
409), Jack could take life slow and easy. During daylight hours, he could loll around his bachelor-unclean
flat (chittering dustbunnies prowling from couch to cupboard; obscurantist buildup on the windows,
sulfur-yellow sweatcrust on the inside, pinky-grey smogma on the outside), quaffing his Anonymous
the televised Motorball games. Lookit that gracefully knurltopped Dean Tesh play, how easily he scored,
like a regular Kuykendall Canton pawpaw!
Ignoring his master's excited rumbles and despairing whoops, Motherway the steel-colored bonedog
would lie peacefully by the side of Jack's slateslab chair, mostly droop-eyed and snore-birthing,
occasionally emitting a low growl directed at a more-than-usually daring dustbunny, the bonedog's
acutely articulated leathery wings reflexively snickersnacking in stifled pursuit.
Three times daily Motherway got his walkies. Down the four flights of badly lit, incongruently angled
stairs Jack and his pet would clomber, Motherway's cloven chitin hooves scrabbling for purchase on the
scarred boards. Last time down each day, Jack would pause in the lobby and check for mail. He never
got anything, barring his moonly check, but it was good to clear the crumblies out of his wall-adherent
mailsack. Dragoman Mr Spiffle wouldn't leave the mail if contumacious crumblies nested within Jack's
fumarole-pocked personal mailsack. And Jack didn't blame him! One or two migrant crumblies a day
could be dealt with--but not a whole moonly nest!
Outside on Marmoreal Boulevard, Jack and Motherway always turned left, toward Newspaper Park.
Marmoreal Boulevard paralleled the Isinglass River, which gurgled and chortled in its high-banked
channel directly across the Boulevard from Jack's flat. The mean and treacherous slippery river was
further set off from foot and vehicle traffic by a wide promenade composed of earth-mortared butterblox
and a rail of withyweave. Mostly, the promenade remained vacant of strollers. It didn't pay to get too
close to the Isinglass, as more than one uncautious twitterer had discovered, when--peering curiously
over the rail to goggle at the rainbowed plumduff sluicejuice pouring from the Stoltz Refinery pipes--he or
she would be looped by a long suckered manipulator and pulled down to eternal aquatic slavery on the
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