"Dozois Gardner - A Cat Horror Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

end, your own humans will kill you!"

This was almost too much. They pressed close together for comfort, too scared
even to wail or moan now.

There was a crazed light in Blackie's eyes. "I saw Stuff's ghost last night. I
often see it, after dark. Her fur is like ice, like frost on a winter morning
and her dead eyes give back no light . . ."

The moon was high and full above them now, and it seemed to tug on their souls,
as if it would suck them out through the tops of their heads and up into the
mysterious depths of the night sky, where they would fall forever through the
dark.

"Yes!" a tom shrieked. "Yes! I have seen it! Its feet leave no mark on the grass
when it walks, and its eyes are like deep pools of black water! And one night,
when everyone slept except me, I could hear it outside, scratching on the door,
trying to get in --"

A huge Dead Thing went by overhead, roaring, a blazing light flying through the
night sky like a terrible gazing eye, seeming to pass almost close enough to
touch, and the People crouched low on the hillside until the monster had rumbled
away into distance and was gone.

In the sudden shocked silence, Caeser said, almost with satisfaction, "The
Ghostway is around us, always." And the People shivered deliciously, and moved
closer in the night, and told their stories until the moon went down, as they
have for a million generations, and as they will for a million more, until the
Earth goes cold, and even the People are forgotten.

1 In the True Tongue, the word we render here as "human" is more closely
expressed as "Bad-Smelling.
Foodgiver-and-Lair-Mate-Who-Speaks-Loudly-and-Moves-Slowly," although that also
is a loose translation, and subject to variation in local dialects.

2 This was the name his humans had given him, of course. The True Names of the
People are impossible to reproduce here, as the verbal element is only a small
part of each name, and perhaps the most insignificant part, the really vital
information being conveyed by body posture, the speed and stiffness of movement,
the position of the ears and tail, the pattern of ruffling or twitching of the
fur, and, most importantly, the hot rich smell of the anus, and the lingering,
eloquent tang of urine.

3 The human word "demons," of course, has associations with Christian theology
that the actual phrase in the True Tongue does not share, but it will serve to
give an impression of something both malefic and enigmatic, an incomprehensible
force that kills you with terrifying casualness, for unknowable reasons -- if
for any reason at all; this is more vivid in the speech of the People.

4 "False Skin "is about the closest you can come to this in the True Tongue,