"James Patrick Kelly - The Best Christmas Ever" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

would be just devastated if anything happened to him. She waved gaily and hit the horn again.
Beep-beep-BEEP!

The dog and the cat had transformed themselves into reindeer for the outing. The cat got the red nose.
Three of the animal biops had assumed reindeer bodies too. They were all harnessed to the sleigh, which
hovered about a foot off the ground. As the man stumped down the steps, Aunty Em discouraged the
antigrav, and the runners crunched against gravel. The girlfriend bundled the man aboard.

"Do you see who we have guiding the way?" said Aunty Em. She beamed the cat and it lit up its nose.
"See?"

"Is that the fake cop?" The man coughed. "Or the fake pizza guy? I can't keep them straight."

"On Dasher, now Dancer, now Comet and Nixon," cried Aunty Em as she encouraged the antigrav. "To
the mall, Rudolf, and don't bother to slow down for yellow lights!" She cracked the whip and away they
went, down the driveway and out into the world.

The man lived at the edge of the biop compound, away from the bustle of the spaceport and the
accumulatorium with its bulging galleries of authentic human artifacts and the vat where new biops were
budded off the master template. They drove along the perimeter road. The biops were letting the forest
take over here, and saplings of birch and hemlock sprouted from the ruins of the town.

The sleigh floated across a bridge and Aunty Em started to sing. "Over the river and through the woods
тАж" But when she glanced over her shoulder and saw the look on the man's face, she stopped. "Is
something wrong, Bertie dear?"

"Where are you taking me?" he said. "I don't recognize this road."

"It's a secret," said Aunty Em. "A Christmas secret."

His blood pressure had dropped to 93/60. "Have I been there before?"

"I wouldn't think so. No."

The girlfriend clutched the man's shoulder. "Look," she said. "Sheep."

Four ewes had gathered at the river's edge to drink, their stumpy tails twitching. They were big animals;
their long, tawny fleeces made them look like walking couches. A brown man on a dromedary camel
watched over them. He was wearing a satin robe in royal purple with gold trim at the neck. When Aunty
Em beamed him the signal, he tapped the line attached to the camel's nose peg and the animal turned to
face the road.

"One of the wise men," said Aunty Em.

"The king of the shepherds," said the girlfriend.

As the sleigh drove by, the wise man tipped his crown to them. The sheep looked up from the river and
bleated, "Happy holidays."

"They're so cute," said the girlfriend. "I wish we had sheep."