"Mike Resnick & Nicholas A DiChario - Birdie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

it burning inside your nose like that." He stares at me. "Do you get headaches?
Father gets them badly sometimes. Where do you come from? Do you have any
family?"

"My fire is not painful; I don't get headaches; and I don't come from anywhere,
nor do I have any family."

"Everybody comes from somewhere."

"Is that so?" I retort. "Says who?"

The lad sits down cross-legged on the hard-packed din and holds the candle out
in front of him, inspecting me. I shut down my nostril, and a small cloud of
smoke wafts in the air between us. A pensive look crosses the cub's face, too
serious- a look for a young human boy -- at least from what I can remember of
them. I've come across a few in my lifetime. They always look a little stupid
and very frightened in my presence, never pensive. In any event, I am intrigued,
as much by the boy as by the fact that I seem to be carrying on a conversation
with him.

"What are you doing down here in my wine cellar?" I ask him.

"Father is punishing me for making too much noise in the house. He's always
punishing me for something. I think he doesn't like me much. He says I'll never
amount to anything. He says I lack ex-pe-di-en-cy, whatever that means. Just now
he told me I've pushed him to the limits of his endurance so he's locking me in
the dungeon until after dinner."

"The dungeon?" I repeat. "Is that what he calls it?" The boy nods. "What's your
name, lad?"

"Charles. Charles Darwin."

"Your father wouldn't happen to be Robert Darwin, would he?"

"Do you know Father?" he asks.

"I've met a few members of your lineage. Apparently it is a Darwin tradition to
punish their cubs by banishing them to the wine cellar--excuse me, the dungeon
-- where the sight of me is supposed to terrify them."

"I don't find you scary at all."

"Come to think of it, I don't find you scary either," I say.

The boy nods, apparently satisfied with the arrangement.

"Expediency," I say. "A concentrated effort in pursuing a particular goal or
self-interest with efficiency and haste."