"Gardner Dozois - Chains of the Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

feet across. A pause then to check his systems for amber damage lights. The
board being all green, he'd put the ship in _travel_ gear and drive along some
more, slowly, scanning methodically for the next puddle. All this took
considerable time, but it wasn't a thing you could skimp on -- you had to do
it right.
He thought occasionally, _Mom will be mad again_, but it lacked force
and drifted away on the wind. Already breakfast this morning was something
that had happened a million years ago -- the old gas oven lighted for warmth
and hissing comfortably to itself, the warm cereal swimming with lumps, the
radio speaking coldly in the background about things he never bothered to
listen to, the hard gray light pouring through the window onto the kitchen
table.
Mom had been puffy-eyed and coughing. She had been watching television
late and had fallen asleep on the couch again, her cloth coat thrown over her
for a blanket, looking very old when Tommy came out to wake her before
breakfast and to shut off the humming test pattern on the TV. Tommy's father
had yelled at her again during breakfast, and Tommy had gone into the bathroom
for a long time, washing his hands slowly and carefully until he heard his
father leave for work. His mother pretended that she wasn't crying as she made
his cereal and fixed him "coffee," thinned dramatically with a half a cup of
cold water and a ton of milk and sugar, "for the baby," although that was
exactly the way she drank it herself. She had already turned the television
back on, the moment her husband's footsteps died away, as if she couldn't
stand to have it silent. It murmured unnoticed in the living room, working its
way through an early children's show that even Tommy couldn't bear to watch.
His mother said she kept it on to check the time so that Tommy wouldn't be
late, but she never did that. Tommy always had to remind her when it was time
to bundle him into his coat and leggings and rubber boots -- when it was
raining -- for school. He could never get rubber boots on right by himself,
although he tried very hard and seriously. He always got tangled up anyway.
He reached the top of the hill just as the buzz saw chuckled and
sputtered to a stop, leaving a humming, vibrant silence behind it. Tommy
realized that he had run out of puddles, and he changed himself instantly into
a big, powerful land tank, the kind they showed on the war news on television,
that could run on caterpillar treads or wheels and had a hovercraft air
cushion for the tough parts. Roaring, and revving his engine up and down, he
turned off the gravel road into the thick stand of fir forest. He followed the
footpath, tearing along terrifically on his caterpillar treads, knocking the
trees down and crushing them into a road for him to roll on. That made him
uneasy, though, because he loved trees. He told himself that the trees were




Page 3
only being bent down under his weight, and that they sprang back up again
after he passed, but that didn't sound right. He stopped to figure it out.
There was a quiet murmur in the forest, as if everything were breathing very
calmly and rhythmically. Tommy felt as if he'd been swallowed by a huge,
pleasant green creature, not because it wanted to eat him, but just to let him