"David Langford - Blit (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Langford David)

BLIT
a short story by David Langford

It was like being caught halfway through a flashy film-dissolve. The
goggles broke up the dim street, split and reshuffled it along diagonal
lines: a glowing KEBABS sign was transposed into the typestyle they
called
Shatter. Safest to keep the goggles on, Robbo had decided. Even in the
flickering electric half-light before dawn, you never knew what you
might
see. Just his luck if the stencil jumped from under his arm and
unrolled
itself before his eyes as he scrabbled for it on the pavement.
That would be a good place, behind the 34 (a shattered 34) bus stop.
This
was their part of town; the women flocked there each morning,
twittering
in their saris like bright alien canaries. A good place, by a
boarded-up
shop window thick with flyposted gig announcements.
Robbo scanned the street for movement, glanced at his own hand to be
reassured by a blurred spaghetti of fingers. Guaranteed Army issue
goggles
-- the Group had friends in funny places -- but they said the eye
eventually adjusts. One day something clicks, and clear outlines jump
at
you. He flinched as the thick plastic unrolled; then the nervy moment
was
past, his left hand pressing the stencil against a tattered poster
while
in his right the spray-can hissed.
The sweetish, heady smell of car touch-up paint made it all seem oddly
distant from an act of terrorism.
He found he'd been careless, easy in this false twilight and through
these
lenses: there were tacky patches on his fingers as he re-rolled the
Parrot. A few hours on, in thick morning light, the brown women would
be
playing the wink game.... Jesus, how long since he'd been a kid and
played
that? Must be five years. The one who'd drawn the murder card caught
your
eye and winked, and you had to die with lots of spasms and overacting.
To
survive, you needed to spot the murderer first and get in with an
accusation -- or at least, know where not to look.
It was cold. Time to move on, to pick another place. Goggles or no
shatter-goggles, he didn't look back at the image of the Parrot. It
might
wink.