"Bimbos Of The Death Sun - 02 - Zombies Of The Gene Pool" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCrumb Sharyn)

The trip ended in a puff of smoke outside Seymour, Indiana. The Stalwart Six stood at a safe distance from the Tin Lizard's radiator, watching their dreams of Worldcon evaporate in clouds of steam.

"Well," said Woodard at last. "It could have been worse. At least we didn't hit a train."

"Can we fix it?" asked Bunzie, close to tears. He clutched his Esso road map as if it were a talisman.

"Can't afford a new radiator," Dale Dugger told him. "That would cost at least twenty bucks. We can stop every half hour or so and fill this one up as it leaks. That will get us home. But the Lizard would never make it across the prairie like that. It's too far between water holes."

"We have to turn back," Brendan Surn announced, and nobody argued. With a last look westward, they climbed back in the car, and for a full half hour no one's voice dispelled the gloom.

The ailing Tin Lizard headed for home, with her six Gunga Dins running for water at every streambed. By the time they reached Nashville, their spirits had revived, and Giles and Surn had immortalized the journey in a parody of Kipling's poem:

You may talk o' Blog and Bheer
When your fellow fen are near,
But Tin Lizard doesn't give a damn for boozing;
Studebaker's bastard daughter
Runs on Indiana water,
And about six quarts an hour she was losing.



It went on from there, with dwindling coherence and many forced rhymes, for some fourteen verses. Long before the composition was complete, Malone had retreated into the pages of Brainwave, and he kept ordering the revelers to shut up so that he could read.

They reached home just after nine, trailing ribbons of steam in the lingering twilight of a summer evening. The dark mountains closed behind them, walling out California and all the rest of the inaccessible world. Fireflies flashed like tiny meteors among the clumps of tiger lilies, and from the cow pond, the rhythmic chirrup of frogs welcomed the travelers home.

"How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm?" said Bunzie. As he climbed out of the Tin Lizard, he kicked a tire in disgust. "So much for the goddamned Worldcon."

"What do we do now?" asked George Woodard.

Pat Malone, who was helping to unload the trunk, looked thoughtfully at the box of supplies he was holding. "We've got the makings for a hell of a party."

"We could have our own convention," said Bunzie. "We have everything but the Worldcon guest of honor. John W. Campbell Jr.Чhell, I'll be him!"

"We have no femmefans," Pat Malone pointed out. "Jazzy is at the con, and Earlene has to work Saturdays."

"We can call Angela Arbroath. She couldn't make it to 'Frisco, but I'll bet she could drive up from Mississippi. Maybe she could bring a girlfriend."

"We still have most of our travel money," said Brendan Surn. He was tall and lean in those days, with a hawklike face that seldom smiled. He was smiling now. "Twenty-two dollars will buy a hell of a lot of beer."

Dale Dugger took a running leap at the pasture fence and disappeared into the darkness.

"Where are you going?" Woodard called after him.

"To get some more water for Tin Lizard's radiator!" Dugger yelled back. "The closest beer joint is eight miles up the road!"



Professor Erik Giles closed his bedroom window, shutting out the night air and the sound of chirruping frogs. He didn't want to think about the Lanthanides anymore. The years in Wall Hollow had been enjoyable but useless blocks of time out of his life. Not long after the Worldcon expedition, they had gone their separate ways. Shortly after the dissolution of the group, the Tennessee Valley Authority had condemned the entire valley, paying its residents nominal value for their land. Then, in order to keep the Watauga River from flooding farther downstream, the TVA built a dam, creating a vast artificial lake in the sprawling valley. He had never been back to see it. There had been a letter from Dugger at the time it happened, but he had waited too long to answer it, and his reply came back marked "No forwarding address." Dugger was gone by then, drinking up his settlement money in the honky-tonks of Nashville, giving up fandom for different and more dangerous obsessions. Giles wondered if the government's seizure of the Dugger land had caused Dale's downward slide into alcoholism and poverty. It was too late now for Dale Dugger, but for the rest of them, there was a chance to get together again and to recapture at least some of the past. In his last letter, Dugger had written: "I didn't dig up the time capsule. I got no future to take it to."