"Gardner Dozois - A Special Kind of Morning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

guff? Don't even bother to answer; I knew the minute you came whistling
down the street, full of steam and strut. Nobody gets up this early in the
morning anymore, unless they're old as I am and begrudge sleep's dry-run
of deathтАФor unless they've never been to bed in the first place. The world's
your friend this morning, a toy for you to play with and examine and stuff
in your mouth to taste, and you're letting your benevolence slop over onto
the old degenerate you've met on the street. You're even happy enough to
listen, though you're being quizzical about it, and you're sitting over there
feeling benignly superior. And I'm sitting over here feeling benignly
superior. A nice arrangement, and everyone content. "Well, then,
mornings make you feel that way. Especially if you're fresh from a night at
the Towers, the musk of Lady Ni still warm on your flesh.

A blushтАФmy buck, you are new-hatched. How did I know?

Boy, you'd be surprised what I know; I'm occasionally startled myself,
and I've been working longer to get it cataloged. Besides, hindsight is a
comfortable substitute for omnipotence. And I'm not blind yet. You have
the unmistakable look of a cub who's just found out he can do something
else with it besides piss. An incredible revelation, as I recall. The blazing
significance of it will wear a little with the years, though not all that much,
I suppose; until you get down to the brink of the Ultimate Cold, when you
stop worrying about the identity of warmth, or demanding that it pay toll
in pleasure. Any hand of clay, long's the blood still runs the tiny degree
that's just enough for difference. Warmth's the only definition between
you and graveyard dirt. But morning's not for graveyards, though it works
the other way. Did y'know they also used to use that to make babies?
'S'fact, though few know it now. It's a versatile beast. Oh comeтАФbuck, cub,
young cocksmanтАФstop being so damn surprised. People ate, slept, and
fornicated before you were born, some of them anyway, and a few will
probably even find the courage to keep on at it after you die. You don't
have to keep it secret; the thing's been circulated in this region once or
twice before. You weren't the first to learn how to make the beast do its
trick, though I know you don't believe that. I don't believe it concerning
myself, and I've had a long time to learn.

You make me think, sitting there innocent as an egg and twice as
vulnerable; yes, you are definitely about to make me think, and I believe
I'll have to think of some things I always regret having thought about, just
to keep me from growing maudlin. Damn it, boy, you do make me think.
Life's strangeтАФwet-eared as you are, you've probably had that thought a
dozen times already, probably had it this morning as you tumbled out of
your fragrant bed to meet the rim of the sun; well, I've four times your age,
and a ream more experience, and I still can't think of anything better to
sum up the world: life's strange. 'S been said, yes. But think, boy, how
strange: the two of us talking, you coming, me going; me knowing where
you've got to go, you suspecting where I've been, and the same destination
for both. O strange, very strange! Damn it, you're a deader already if you
can't see the strangeness of that, if you can't sniff the poetry; it reeks of it,
as of blood. And I've smelt blood buck. It has a very distinct odor; you