"Jay Lake - The Sky that Wraps the World Round, past the Blue and Into the Black" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lake Jay)

relationship with water. The very idea of oceans seems a divine improbability to them. As for
me, my parents came from Samoa. I was born in Tacoma, and grew up on Puget Sound before
finding my way Up. To me, it's just water.

Still, this little pond choked with the wrong kind of life seems to say so much about everything
that is wrong with Earth, with the Deep Dark, with the little damp sparks of colonies on Ceres
and Mars and elsewhere. I wondered what would happen to the pond if I poured my blue paint
out of its lead-lined bottles into the water.

"Your work holds fair," says Huang. I did not hear him approach. Glancing down, I see his
crepe-soled boat shoes, that could have come straight off some streetcorner vendor's rack to
cover his million dollar feet.

I meet his water-blue eyes. Pale, so pale, reflecting the color of his golf shirt. "Thank you,
sir."

He looks at me a while. It is precisely the look an amah gives a slab of fish in the market.
Finally he speaks again: "There have been inquiries."

I reply without thinking. "About the radioactives?"

One eyebrow inches up. "Mmm?"

I am quiet now. I have abandoned our shared fiction for a moment, that pretense that I do
not know he is poisoning thousands of homes worldwide through his artifact trade. Mistakes
such as that can be fatal. That the entire present course of my life is fatal is not sufficient
excuse for thoughtless stupidity.

Huang takes my silence as an answer. "Certain persons have come to me seeking a man of
your description."

With a shrug, I tell him, "I was famous once, for a little while." One of history's villains, in fact,
in my moment of media glory.

"What you paid me to keep you...they have made an offer far more generous."

I'd sold him my life, that strange, cold morning in a reeking teahouse in Sendai the previous
year. Paid him in a substantial amount cash, labor and the last bare threads of my reputation
in exchange for a quiet, peaceful penance and the release of obligation. Unfortunately, I could
imagine why someone else would trouble to buy Huang out.

He was waiting for me to ask. I would not do that. What I would do was give him a reason not
to send me away. "My handiwork meets your requirements, yes?" Reminding him of the hot
paint, and the trail of liability which could eventually follow that blue glow back to its source.

Even gangsters who'd left any fear of law enforcement far behind could be sued in civil court.

"You might wish me to take this offer," he says slowly.

"When has the dog ever had its choice of chains?"