"Ian McDonald - Some Strange Desire" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

Some Strange Desire

a short story by Ian McDonald




19 November, 10:30 P.M.
The hru-tesh is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Mother says he can remember
Grandmother taking him, while still very small, to watch Josias Cunningham,
Gunsmith by Appointment, of Fleet Street at work on it. In that small shop, in
those small hours when the city slept, Josias Cunningham worked away while the
spires and domes of Wren's dream of London rose from the ashes of the Great
Fire, chasing and filing and boring and inlaying. It was a work of love, I
suppose. A masterpiece he could never disclose to another living soul, for it
was the work of demons. On the bone-handled stock is a filigreed silver plate on
a pivot-pin. Underneath, an inscription: Diabolus me Fecit. The Devil Made Me.
He was ul-goi of course, Josias Cunningham, Gunsmith by Appointment, of Fleet
Street.
After three hundred years, the firing mechanism is still strong and precise. It
gives a definite, elegant click as I draw back the bolt and lock it.
Lights are burning in the apartment across the street. The white BMW sits
rain-spattered under its private cone of yellow light. Have you ever known
anyone who drives a white BMW to do anything or be anyone of any significance? I
cannot say that I have, either. I blow on my fingers. I cannot let them become
chilled. I cannot let their grip on the hru-tesh slacken and weaken. Hurry up
and go about your business, goi, so I can go about mine and get back into the
dry and the warm. Cold rain finds me in my bolt-hole on the roof, penetrates my
quilted jacket like needles. None so cold as the needle I have waiting for you,
goi. I touch the thermos flask beside me, for luck, for reassurance, for the
blessing of the hahndahvi.
Come on, goi, when are you going to finish what you are doing and go out to
collect the day's takings from your boys? Voices are raised in the lighted
apartment across the yellow- lit cobbled street. Male voices. I cannot make out
the words, only the voices.
Even on my rooftop across the street, the blow is almost palpable. And then the
weeping. A door slams. I uncap the thermos, shake a tiny sliver of ice into the
breech of the hru-tesh. The street door opens. He is dressed in expensive
leather sports gear. In the dark I cannot read the labels. He turns to swear one
last time at the youth at the top of the stairs. I let a drop of saliva fall
from my tongue onto the needle of ice resting in the chamber. Slide the breech
shut. Move from my cover. Take aim, double-handed, over the fire-escape rail.
Coptic crosses and peace medallions catch the yellow street light as he bends to
unlock the car door. The silver filigree-work of the hru-tesh crafted by the
three-hundred-year-dead hand of Josias Cunningham, Gunsmith by Appointment,
glitters in that same light. I squeeze the trigger.
There is only the faintest tok.
He starts, stands up, clasps hand to neck. Puzzlement on his meatlike face.
Puzzlement under that so-cool baseball cap at that ideologically correct angle.
And it hits him. He keels straight over against the car. His head rests at a