"Gardner Dozois & Michael Swanwick - Ancestral Voices" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

explained to him, тАЬShe ought to be back from the barn by now.тАЭ With a sigh, he
switched off his calculator, set down his ballpoint pen, and stood. тАЬNow where did I
leave my coat?тАЭ
Iago bounded up eagerly when Desmond opened the door, and insisted on
following him out into the snow. The door slammed, and IagoтАЩs excited barking
faded as they headed toward the old barn.
Five minutes later, Desmond returned, carrying CandyтАЩs body.
 Mrs. Kingsley saw him coming from the kitchen window andтАФwith a
smothered exclamation of horrorтАФhurried to throw open the door for him. Together
they hurried into the parlor and laid Candy down on a couch.
It was possible now to assess the damage that had been done the woman. Her
features were unnaturally sunken, the cheeks collapsed in on themselves, drawing the
lips back from the teeth, and her stomach was literally concave, looking as if
someone had punched it in with his fist. An ugly purple flush was still spreading over
her face as hundreds of ruptured capillaries lost blood.
тАЬShe was just lying there!тАЭ Desmond said helplessly. тАЬLike sheтАЩd had a heart
attack or something. Is the phone still out? We need a doctor. Maybe I canтАжI could
hike out to the road and flag down a car.тАЭ
Alma Kingsley put a finger under the girlтАЩs nostrils. She touched her wrists,
forehead, chest. She pressed down a fingernail, looked at the color.
тАЬDesmond,тАЭ she said, тАЬitтАЩs too late.тАЭ
She straightened, and her son-in-law did likewise, both involuntarily drawing
away from the body, as if by so doing they could distance themselves from death.
When she glanced away, Mrs. Kingsley saw that Jennifer was standing in the middle
of the parlor rug, eyes wide and calm, staring at the corpse.
тАЬDaddy,тАЭ she said, тАЬis Candy dead?тАЭ
Her father got a sick expression on his face, as if heтАЩd been called upon to
explain sex and reproduction to the child right now, with no blushing and no
preparation. But he answered, voice flat and superficially composed, тАЬYes.тАЭ
тАЬLike on TV?тАЭ
Alma Kingsley regained control then, and gathered the two up. With a push
here, a nudge there, she shooed father and daughter out of the parlor and into the
kitchen. At her command, Iago followed. Then she closed the door.


To survive, it had to get into the farmhouse. It knew that now, with a kind of
animal cunning that came before reason and intellect. There were sophonts within,
and it was practically suicidal to attack a sophont within its own lair. But they were
few in number, and they were isolated from their own kind. And while they were
danger, they were also nourishment.
It hesitated at the doorway of the shed, baffled by the snow that had already
drifted above the middle hinges. Then it flowed up the wall, climbing to the crack at
the top of the doorway, and eased through. Halfway out it halted, stunned by how
the world had been transformed. The falling snow formed complex, shifting patterns
that disappeared the instant it got a fix on them. It was as if the world had been
shredded and divided into component atoms, then instantly rearranged, again and
again, a thousand times a second. All anew, it was struck by the sheer alienness of
this world, where nothing was certain, where everything shifted and moved and
changed. It wavered, flowed outward, flinched back again. Individual flakes of snow
touched its surface, did not melt, slid off without sticking.