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

Had anyone been watching from the house, they would have seen it then,
carelessly, dangerously exposed. But occupied as they were with their own troubles,
no one was looking.
It advanced out onto the snow then, all in a rush, sudden and brave. Midway
between barn and house, it halted. Nothing happened. It found it could partially filter
out the flakes falling, though they disoriented and bewildered it still. Purposefully it
set out for the farmhouse, a solid mass of potential shelter, unchanging, shot through
with electrical fires and harboring at its heart the precious rumor of fire-of-life.
But the task it had set for itself was not an easy one; the house had been
winterized with typical Yankee thoroughness. Caulk had been applied around every
window and door frame, and a long, even bead had been drawn at the juncture
where clapboarding met foundation. Cracks in the masonry had been plastered over,
and every window was double-paned and covered over with storm windows, every
door had weatherstripping.
It circled the house without finding entrance. The building was tight,
invulnerable to it. There might be entrances up aboveтАФexperience said it was likely
to find chimney pots and furnace exhausts, gable vents, even the occasional
hatchwayтАФbut it dared not climb the house side, up into the swirling, shifting snow,
where matter and sky intermingled. It could not have been sure of maintaining its
orientation, of knowing where the house left off and the air began. It was madness to
even consider it.
Time and again it lashed silently around the house, skimming the surface of the
snow, leaving behind it the very thinnest layer of ice, a trail that disappeared almost
instantaneously under the new falling snow. It was perilously exposed, and this
added to its confusion and desperation, to its determination to try anything, no
matter how rash or foolhardy, that might help it to survive.


Even after Desmond had finally bowed to the inevitable and taken CandyтАЩs
corpse out to the El Dorado, where it could await the snowplows and the doctor and
the coroner in the preserving cold, there was an eerie pall cast over the house.
Jennifer had been put to bed early, and the adults had retired to the kitchen, to try to
talk.
But there was nothing to say. There was no way Candy could have died, and
speculation would not explain the inexplicableтАФonly the autopsy could do that. And
she was a stranger, so there could be no reminiscences about her, none that Alma
Kingsley would care to have Desmond share, anyway. So, in the end, they simply
fell silent. Mrs. Kingsley began going through her cook-books, and Desmond fell to
punching listlessly on the keys of his calculator.
тАЬWhat is wrong with that dog?тАЭ Alma Kingsley grumbled in exasperation. Iago
was pacing the kitchen floor, infinitely restless, his claws going click-click-click on
the linoleum. Now he was at the door again, pushing at the crack between door and
sill with his nose, digging at it hopelessly with his claws, scratching and whining.
тАЬSounds like he wants to be let out,тАЭ Desmond said without looking up.
тАЬWell, maybe I should,тАЭ she said at last. Throwing a wrap over herself, she
took hold of IagoтАЩs collar, and led him to the door. Her intent was to shove his nose
outside and give him a whiff of the cold, and then draw him back in again. That
ought to have settled his restlessness. But when the door opened, he strained
forward, barking furiously, even anxiously, and she saw something outlined on the
snow in the rectangle of light cast by the open door. She squinted and said,