"M. John Harrison - Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison John M)

estimated Ed's skull had last been. 'Guess what?' he said, when the echoes had died away. 'I'm shot too,
Ed. Rite shot me in the heart, long before she met you. These women! It was point-blank, Ed. You make
anything of that?'
'I make suck my dick out of it,' Ed said.
He stood up as coolly as he could. He saw Otto Rank down at the edge of the carwash roof in the
classic infantry kneel, the 30.06 up at aim, its sling tight round his elbow. Ed raised the Colt carefully in
both hands. He had two shots left, and it was important he spoiled the first one. He blinked the sweat out
of his eyes and squeezed off carefully. The round went ten, twelve feet wide, aid Ed dropped his pistol
arm to his side. Otto, who had been surprised to see him pop up out of the weeds like that, gave a wild
laugh of relief.
'You got the wrong gun, Ed!' he shouted.
He stood up. 'Hey,' he said. 'Take another pop. It's free!'
He spread his arms wide. 'Nobody shoots anybody at eighty yards with a Colt .45,' he said.
Ed raised the gun again and fired.
Rank was picked up from the head end and thrown backwards with his feet in the air. He fell off the
roof and into the weeds. 'Fuck you, Ed!' he screamed, but his face was half off and he was already dead.
Chinese Ed looked down at his Colt. He made a gesture as if to throw it away. 'I'm sorry, Rita,' he was
beginning to say, when the sky behind the carwash turned a steely colour and ripped open like a page of
cheap print. This time the duck was huge. Something was wrong with it. Its yellow feathers had a greasy
look, and a human tongue hung laxly out of one side of its beak.
'There will be an interruption to service,' it said. 'As a valued customer тАФ '
At that, Chinese Ed's consciousness was pulled apart and he was received into all the bleakness and pain
of the universe. All the colours went out of his world, and all the beautiful simple ironies along with them,
and then the world itself was folded away until through it, try as he might, he could see nothing but the
cheesy fluorescent lights of Tig Vesicle's tank farm. He erupted out of the wreckage of Tank Seven, half
drowned, throwing up with disorientation and horror. He stared round at the drifting smoke, the; dead
kids and stunned-looking cultivars. Proteome poured sluggishly off him like the albumen of a bad egg.
Poor, dead Rita was gone for good and he wasn't even Chinese Ed the detective anymore. He was Ed
Chianese, twink.
'This is my home, you guys,' he said. 'You know? You could have knocked.'
There was a laugh from the doorway.
'You owe us money, Ed Chianese,' said Bella Cray.
She looked meditatively across the room at the two remaining gun-kiddies. 'These punks aren't from
me,' she said to Tig Vesicle, who had got himself up off the floor and sidled back behind his cheap
plywood counter.
Evie Cray laughed.
'They aren't mine, either,' she said.
She shot them in the face, one after the other, with her Chambers pistol, then showed her teeth. 'That's
what'll happen to you if you don't pay us, Ed,' she explained.
'Hey,' said Bella. 'I wanted to do that.'
'Those punks were some of Fedora Gash's punks,' Evie told Tig Vesicle. 'So why'd you let them in?'
Vesicle shrugged. He had no choice, the shrug indicated.
The cultivars were leaving the farm now, one-handedly dragging their dead and wounded behind them.
The wounded looked down at themselves, dabbling their hands and saying things like, 'I could get shot
like this all day. You know?' Ed Chianese watched them file past and shivered. He stepped out of the
ruined tank, plucked the rubber cables out of his spine and tried to wipe the proteome off himself with his
hands. He could already feel the black voice of withdrawal, like someone talking persuasively a long way
back in his head.
'I don't know you,' he said. 'I don't owe you anything.'
Evie gave him her big lipstick smile.