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

lovely piece that she had spotted on her last trip down south and which (not
coincidentally) was the spitting image of a dresser her Aunt Dorothy had owned
when she was a child, and which she had always, through all the intervening decades,
lusted after. It was a triumph of will, her owning this piece, and the fulfillment of a
girlhood oath, and she savored it as such.
тАЬNow IтАЩm going to want you to come back Tuesday, after the guests are
gone, to place it in the house,тАЭ she admonished the driver. Then, to her
granddaughter, тАЬNo, dear, we do not root about on the dirty floor like small,
ill-mannered swine.тАЭ And again to the driver, тАЬTuesday, you understand, because I
will not have you underfoot with company here. IтАЩll need to decide which furniture to
shift, as well.тАЭ
The driver nodded slowly and, after a pause, said тАЬYep.тАЭ There was a quiet
censuriousness to his monosyllabic reply, as if it were an admonition to keep her
words and reasons to herself. His assistant, chewing on somethingтАФeither gum or
тАЬchaw,тАЭ probably the latterтАФjaws agape and about as attractive-looking as a cow at
its cud, was wielding his pry bar with abandon, splintering the crateтАЩs planks,
threatening the absolutely pricelessтАФand irreparable should it be damagedтАФpatina
of the wood. Until finally she could not bear to simply watch any longer.
тАЬHand me that pry,тАЭ she snapped, and took it away from the gawking youth.
There was a correct way to uncrate furniture; you sought out the joints and deftly,
even daintily, applied leverage there, so that the whole thing popped open like a
walnut shell under properly applied nutcrackers. Brute force was totally unnecessary.
And so she would have shown him, only her arthritis chose that instant to seize up,
and her hands became about as useless as clubs, and wouldnтАЩt close all the way
around the pry. She made a feeble pass or two at the wood, but it was
hopelessтАФthe tool slid in her hand, refusing to obey her. She couldnтАЩt even hold the
damnable thing.
She looked up then, and in a timeless instant of glaring horror saw that the
driver and his slack-jawed assistant were both staring her with pity in their eyes.
Jennifer, thankfully, was too young to comprehend, and stood looking on with
innocent curiosity.
For a moment, she trembled with humiliation, and then, furiously, she flung the
pry bar to the floor. Tears flooding her eyes, she gasped, тАЬOh, you do it!тАЭ and fled.
Behind her, the men quietly, red-facedly, settled the dresser into a dry corner.
When it was in place, the driver rubbed it down with his pocket bandana to remove
any greasy fingerprints, and swiftly pulled each drawer out a half-inch and back in
again, to make sure that none had seized up in transit. He was a conscientious man,
and always gave his work this extra bit of care and attention. But he wasnтАЩt anxious
to linger, and it was entirely understandable that, in his haste, he didnтАЩt fully re-close
one drawer.


It was dying.
Hunger had driven it to the sharp edge of starvation. It was already seriously
sick, or it would have abandoned the dresser immediately upon regaining the mental
equilibrium that served it for consciousness. No matter how comfortably enclosed,
how nurturing and psychologically sheltering a niche it was, the drawer had proven
unsafe. But the long exposure to first one, then another truckтАЩs electrical systems
had weakened and disoriented it, and filled it with anguished glimpses of something
that was once, or perhaps ought to be, but was now no more. It trembled shiveringly