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

flashlights, too many men to make further hunting possible.
There was also the night that the Northern Lights danced faintly in the sky, and
it danced with them, whirling and darting madly on the deserted, icy rooftops under
the cold stars, feeling the enormous magnetic fields stir and scramble its emotions
even at that great distance.
In that still and freezing night, fey and hungry and half-mad, it left its usual
resting place in the ruined belvedere and went down through the building to the
warehouse floor, penetrating deep into the tangles of stacked-up furniture, craving
the solidity of mass between it and the dancing maddening fires that flared and
dimmed on the horizon.
It found a drawer left ajar in a massive dresser that stood upright inside a thick
wooden box, and slithered inside. It waited there in the darkness, jittering and
buzzing with sick energy, unable to loop its mind into oblivion, nearly insane,
occasionally striking furiously and futilely at the smooth wood in side the drawer.
Half an hour later, the white-haired workman entered the ware house. He had
had a hot roast beef sandwich and a couple of knocks of whiskey at the bar on the
corner, and now he had one last task to finish up before he called it quits and went
home. Taking off his overcoat, he reached over and snapped on his portable radio,
but could get nothing out of it but a see-sawing squeal of static. He shrugged and
switched it offтАФthe damn thing had been going haywire off and on for a couple of
months now, and the phones and the old black-and-white TV in the office had been
on the fritz too, now and again. Sunspots, maybe, or some damn microwave relay
tower nearby. Fry us in our goddamn jeans yet, he thought sourly, only dimly aware
of the subconscious pun. He gathered up his tools and walked toward the massive
packing crate.
A step or two from it, he stopped, and felt a chill shiver up his spine.
тАЬSomebodyтАЩs walking on my grave,тАЭ he said aloud, the words coming out flat and
strange in this familiar place that all at once seemed too big and dark and echoingly
empty. Gooseflesh had blossomed on his arms, and he ran his hands down over
them to smooth it. There was a big Federal dresser in the crate, already surrounded
by wood on three sides. The dresserтАЩs bottom drawer was standing ajar, and
abruptly, without knowing why, he reached out with the toe of his work shoe and
kicked it solidly shut.
Another chill shuddered along his spine, raising the tiny hairs on the back of
his neck. It was funny that heтАЩd never noticed how dark and cavernous it was here at
night, or how black and spooky the surrounding shadows were.
Shivering, he manhandled the last end of the packing crate into position and
began to nail, noticing that he was taking unusual, almost obsessive, care to make
sure that the crate was closely and firmly sealedтАФagain without knowing whyтАФas
though for some esoteric reason it needed to be airtight. A line from an old church
song was running repeatedly through his head: Amazing graceтАжsomething
somethingтАжthat saved a wretch like meтАж.
When the job was doneтАФand he took twice as long about it as he should have
takenтАФbut before he turned out the lights and went gratefully home, the workman
took out a Magic Marker and on the side of the crate in large, somewhat shaky
letters wrote:
Mrs. Alma Kingsley
Maple Hill Farm
Eden Falls, Vermont
тАЬGamma, thereтАЩs a truck with men outside!тАЭ