"Kathleen Ann Goonan - What Science Fiction is All About, or The Amazing Dancing Chairs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

тАЬI came to tell you something.тАЭ

тАЬWhat?тАЭ

He shoved the bloody crucifix in LeftonтАЩs face. тАЬThis is the soul of all the animals youтАЩve murdered.тАЭ

Lefton called the Sheriff, who must be a busy guy. Apparently, the man, who lived alone about two miles
away, had worked himself into a righteous rage about LeftonтАЩs murderous habits and begun his midnight
odyssey, hacking his way in the dark through blackberry thickets and beaning himself on an overhanging
tree limb, making his unerring way cross-country to LeftonтАЩs house. He was truly on a mission from the
animal spirits; otherwise, he would have used the road, and his car, for that matter. But he did things the
hard way, and IтАЩm sure it startled Lefton.

All around Lefton, on the ridges and hills, Vacation Log Homes wink down at him at sunset, vast blank
glass walls nestled beneath massive log eaves. Granite-countered kitchens and plasma TV screens at rest
await the Log Home Vacationers, who do not come as often as the owners banked on. Perhaps on the
web pages for Bear Pause Cabin and Hi-Top Lodge frightened renters have left comments about
coyotes howling in the night, about bullets flying around their heads. The owners of the cabins, who live in
Ohio and Indiana and Florida, do not know about Lefton. They donтАЩt know that he is illegally baiting
bears, hanging up pieces of rotting meat back in the woods, and heading up there with his pack of dogs
at night, accompanied by the coyote brigade, who laugh and frolic and lure the dogs away by promising
to mate with them. Once the dogs are alone, the coyotes fall on them and tear them to pieces. To Lefton,
this is a much worse crime than stealing ChristopherтАЩs corn. I think so too. The coyotes have learned
something important about evolution.

One night last summer, my husband tried to wake me up. I am a sound sleeper, so it was very hard. We
were in our one-room cabin, where we lived while we were building our big house. He said, тАЬThereтАЩs a
bear pounding on the door.тАЭ

тАЬUm.тАЭ I tried to go back to sleep.

But then even I was awakened when the bearтАЩs pounding shook the cabin. He was on the porch, a black
shadow taller than the door. I believe he might have thought the cabin was a slightly larger than usual
dumpster and was trying to knock it over. My first thought was, WhereтАЩs the camera?

My husband turned on the porch light and the bear ran away.

This was LeftonтАЩs fault too. He is luring the bears up here with his bear baits. Then he kills them. That
bear was lucky he wasnтАЩt at LeftonтАЩs house.

We called the game warden. He seemed uninterested. What could he prove? But it is not bear season
and it is illegal to bait bears. Lefton could be fined, even jailed, for it. Someday, he might find out that he
cannot ignore the laws that have grown up around him along with the Vacation Log Homes. He might
find out that he is not living in the past. He is living in a Mountain Wonderland, where the bears he thinks
of as food are, instead, cute and cuddly motifs stamped on every storefront and every piece of log
furniture that furnishes the Vacation Log Homes.

But this might not happen. Science fiction shows us that things may not turn out as we think they will.

Some sort of WMDтАФan important new acronym that we all must learn, which stands for diseases and