"Paul Di Filippo - Jack Neck and the Worry Bird" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

spillichaug plantations. GAWPERS AND LOOKYLOOS, BEWARE! read the numerous signage
erected by the solicitous Drudge City Constabulary.

(Boating on the Isinglass held marginally fewer risks. Why, people were still talking about the event that
quickly came to be known throughout Drudge City and beyond as "Pale Captain Dough's Angling
Dismay," an event that Jack had had the misfortune to witness entire from his own flat. And he had
thought the squeaky pleas of the tiddles were hard to dislodge from his mind--!)

Moving down the body-and booth-crowded sidewalk with a frowsty and jangly galumph that was
partially a result of his fossilized left leg and partially attributable to the chunk-heeled, needle-toed boots
which compressed his tiny feet unmercifully, Jack would enjoy the passing sights and sounds and smells
of his neighborhood. A pack of low-slung Cranials surged by, eliciting a snap and lunge from the
umbilical-restrained Motherway. From the peddle-powered, umbrella-shielded, salted-chickpea cart
operated by Mother Gimlett wafted a delectable fragrance that always convinced Jack to part with a
thread or two, securing in return a greasy paper cone of crispy steaming legumes. From the door of Boris
Crocodile's poured forth angular music, the familiar bent notes and goo-modulated subsonics indicating
that Stinky Frankie Konk was soloing on the hookah-piped banjo. Jack would lick his bristly
nodule-dotted lips, anticipating his regular visit that evening to the boisterous Beanery and Caustics Bar,
where he would be served a shot of his favorite dumble-rum by affable bartender Dinky Pachinko.

On the verges of Newspaper Park, beneath the towering headline tree, Jack would let slip Motherway's
umbilical, which would retract inside the bonedog's belly with a whir and a click like a rollershade pull.
Then Motherway would be off to romp with the other cavorting animals, the gilacats and sweaterbats, the
tinkleslinks and slithersloths. Jack would amble over to his favorite bench, where reliably could be found
Dirty Bill Brownback. Dirty Bill was more or less permanently conjoined with his bench, the man's
indiscriminate flesh mated with the porously acquisitive material of the seat. Surviving all weathers and
seasons, subsisting on a diet scrounged from the trashcan placed conveniently at his elbow, Dirty Bill
boasted cobwebbed armpits and crumbly-infested trousers, but was nonetheless an affable companion.
Functioning as a center of fresh gossip and rumors, news and notions, Dirty Bill nevertheless always
greeted Jack Neck with the same stale jibe.

"Hey, Neck, still wearing those cellbug togs? Can't you afford better on your GGGB?"

True, Jack Neck's outfit went unchanged from one moon to the next. His ivory-and-ash-striped shirt and
identically patterned leggings were the official workwear of his union, the MMMM, or Mangum Maulers
Monitoring Moiety, and Jack's body had grown accustomed to the clothes through his long employment.
Of course, the clothes had also grown accustomed to Jack's body, fusing in irregular lumpy seams and
knobbly patches to his jocund, rubicund, moribund flesh. That was just the way it went these days, in the
midst of the Indeterminate. The stability of the Boredom was no more. Boundaries were flux-prone,
cause-and-effect ineffectual, and forms not distinct from ideations. You soon got used to the semi-regular
chaos, though, even if, like Jack, you had been born 'way back in the Boredom.

With the same predictability exhibited by Dirty Bill (human social vapidity remained perhaps the most
stable force in the Indeterminate), Jack would consistently reply, "Happens I fancy these orts, Dirty Bill.
And they fancy me!"

With a chuckle and a snaggletooth snigger, Dirty Bill would pat the bench beside him and offer, "Sit a
spell then, neckless Jack Neck --not too long though, mind you!-- and I'll fill you in on my latest
gleanings. That is, if you'll share a salty chickpea or two!"