"Esther M. Friesner - A Pig's Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

smashed against the far wall.
"Times," said the Hatter ponderously, "change."
"Am I to save myself from times or from change?" the pig inquired.
"Neither," the Hatter replied. "Both. Though always keeping a bit of change on hand to buy the
Times is never a bad notion, Oh, bother it, lad, don't you see? They're here."
The pig glanced up and down the length of the Hatter's tea table, taking in a panorama of stale
cakes, crumbled crumpets, a shambles of old scones. "Roaches?" he suggested. "Ants?"
The Hatter clucked his tongue. "Don't waste your time talking, but listen." He then lapsed into
silence.
No one practices patience better than a pig, but even so there are limits to the length of time one
can sit at a cluttered tea table in company with an attested loony and listen to nothing. Pigs could not care
less about Zen. The question needs must at last arise: "Listen to what?"
"To me, of course," said the Hatter.
"But you haven't said anything," the pig objected.
"Of course I've said something" the Hatter countered.
The pig sighed and picked up the largest cake knife he could get his hands on. He held this to the
Hatter's throat and said, "Mother used to complain about you. If this is going to turn into another one of
those word-swaps where you go on to say that you have, in the past, said something, I'm not the one to
put up with it."
"Children today," the Hatter grumbled. But he eyed the cake knife askance and added, "Fine. I'll
speak plainly. But it's not going to endear either one of us to generations of children yet to come."
The pig merely snorted. Then he snorted again, put out no end to learn that a boy's nose is
physically unable to produce as loud and satisfying a snort as a pig's snout.
"You said they're here," said the pig. "Tell me who they are and you won't have to whistle through
your windpipe."
"Analysts," said the Hatter.
"What?" The cake knife insistently pressed the wattled skin just above the Hatter's high collar and
cravat.
"Analysts," the Hatter repeated. "Diggers after meaning, blast them all to an eternity of moldy jam
and rancid butter. D'you remember Alice?"
"We met," the pig admitted.
"Well, she woke up, told tales out of school, bent the ear of a mathematician, no less. A nice
young man, scared witless of women. He was devoted to the girl; most girls, until they reached the age of
imperilment. Next thing anyone knew"тАФthe Hatter shudderedтАФ"text."
"I don't understand," said the pig, but he was courteous enough to set aside the cake knife and pour
the Hatter a fresh cup of tea.
"I am a poet," the Hatter said, pressing a hand to his well-starched shirt bosom. "I don't get out
much, nor keep up with any books other than the slim volume of verse I am even as we speak preparing
for the printer's. But some folks rush their scribblings into print with indecent haste, as if they were brides
already eight months gone with child. Alice's adventures were common fodder long before you took it
into your head to walk on two legs again."
"You know who I am?" The pig cast a weather eye behind him, as best he was able, to see if
perhaps his transformation had been incomplete. No corkscrew tail distorted the seat of his trousers. All
was well.
It was the Hatter's turn to snort, and very well he did, too, even lacking a snout. "Of course I know,
you clod! How could I avoid knowing?" He reached under a pile of dusty Banbury tarts and excavated a
floury copy of Mr. Carroll's most beloved work. "It's all in the book."
The pig helped himself to the relic, paging through Alice's dream with the proper mixture of
reverence and resentment that he had not merited longer mention. While he consulted the text, the Hatter
grumbled on.