"James Patrick Kelly - The Edge of Nowhere" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

The Edge of Nowhere
a novelette
by James Patrick Kelly
Lorraine Carraway scowled at the dogs through the plate glass window of the Casa de la Laughing
Cookie and Very Memorial Library. The dogs squatted in a row next to the book drop, acting as if they
owned the sidewalk. There were three of them, grand in their bowler hats and paisley vests and bow ties.
They were like no dogs Rain had ever seen before. One of them wore a gold watch on its collar, which
was pure affectation since it couldn't possibly see the dial. Bad dogs, she was certain of that, recreated
out of rust and dead tires and old Coke bottles by the cognisphere and then dispatched to Nowhere to
spy on the real people and cause at least three different kinds of trouble.

Will turned a page in his loose-leaf binder. "They still out there?" He glanced up at her, his No. 2 pencil
poised over a blank page.

"What the hell do they think they're doing?" Rain made brushing motions just under the windowsill. "Go
away. Scram!"

"Scram?" said Will. "Is scram a word?"

Will had been writing The Great American Novel ever since he had stopped trying to prove Fermat's
Last Theorem. Before that he had been in training to run a sub four-minute mile. She'd had to explain to
him that the mile was a measure of distance, like the cubit or the fathom or the meter. Rain had several
books about ancient measurement in the Very Memorial Library and Will had borrowed them to lay out
a course to practice on. They'd known each other since the week after Will had been revived, but they
had first had sex during his running phase. It turned out that runners made wonderfully energetic lovers --
especially nineteen year old runners. She had been there to time his personal best at 4:21:15. But now he
was up to Chapter Eleven of The Great American Novel. He had taken on the project after Rain
assured him that the great American novel had yet to be written. These days, not many people were
going for it.

"Where do dogs like that come from, anyway?" Will said.

"Don't be asking her about dogs," called Fast Eddie from his cookie lab. "Rain hates all dogs, don't you
know?"

Rain was going to deny this, but the Casa de la Laughing Cookie was Fast Eddie's shop. Since he let her
keep her books in the broken meat locker and call it a library, she tried not to give him any headaches.
Of course, Rain didn't hate dogs, it was just that she had no use for their smell, their turds hidden in
lawns, or the way they tried to lick her face with their slimy tongues. Of course, this bunch weren't the
same as the dim-witted dogs people kept around town. They were obviously creatures of the
cognisphere; she expected that they would be better behaved.

Will came up beside her. "I'm thinking the liver-colored one with the ears is a bloodhound." He nodded
at the big dog with the watch on its collar. "The others look like terriers of some sort. They've got a
pointer's skull and the short powerful legs. Feisty dogs, killers actually. Fox hunters used to carry terriers
in their saddlebags and when their hounds cornered the poor fox, they'd release the terriers to finish him
off."

"How do you know that?" said Rain, suddenly afraid that there would be dogs in The Great American
Novel.