"Spider Robinson - The End of the Painbow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

Leprechauns make shoes."
Brief silence.
"What do cluricaunes do?" Doc Webster asked.
"Drink."
He paled. "Oh, shit."
"Hip-deep," I agreed.
"A cluricaune," Long-Drink said darkly, "is a walking thirst."
 "A walkin' toist?" Fast Eddie exclaimed. "Cripes, JakeтАФ"
"Take a good look, folks: that's the finish of Mary's place, right there in handcuffs," I told them all.
"Unlike many of the Little Folk, a cluricaune will attach himself to a specific place, rather than to a family
or clan. And what he does to that place is to drink it dryтАФno matter what God or man may do to stop
him. A cluricaune can suck booze through a stone jug. He can smell sauce in a cesspool."
The cluricaune began to snoreтАФloudly.
An extrapolation suddenly occurred to me. "In fact, I am the only bartender in the world prepared to
bet cash that not one of his customers needs to pee."
Rooba rooba roobaтАФ
"I thought I knew every con there was," Willard Hooker said, "but a cluricaune is a new one on me."
"What the hell is he doing in America?" Mary Kay asked.
"It's a good question," I conceded. "I've heard of a few of the old Daoine Sidh leaving IrelandтАФbut
mostly pookas, and once in a long while a Fir Darrig. It makes least sense for a cluricaune. Say you
loved coffee more than life itself: would you move away from the foot of the Blue Mountains? It's highly
improbтАФ" I broke off and looked at the Duck.
"What's a Deeny Shee?" Eddie asked.
The Duck seemed to me horrorstruck by my obvious suspicion. Too late, I regretted having let it
become obvious. "The Daoine Sidh are the fairy folk, Eddie," I said, "descendants of the Tuatha De
Danaan, the Tribe of the Goddess Diana. Originally from Greece, by way of Scandinavia, took over
Ireland from the Firbolgs back about the time clothes were being invented. They got their own butts
kicked by the Miledhians about twenty-five hundred years ago.
The survivors talked it over and decided they couldn't live as a conquered people. So they went
underground, at a place called Brugh na Boinne in County Meath, and over time evolved into the Daoine
Sidh: the fairies and pookas and Fir Darrigs and leprechaunsтАФyes, and the cluricaunes too."
The cluricaune's snore backfired twice, sharply, and then settled into the rhythm againтАФat a higher
volume.
Doc Webster cleared his throat in counterpoint. "Look, Jake, in this company, I have had personal
experience of many strange things. But I understood that the Daoine Sidh were mythical. Like ghosts,
and channeled entities, and commercial kiddy porn. Not real."
"You mean 'real,' like time machines, and faster-than-light travel, and people that rain won't fall on,
Doc?"
"Unt talkink dogs?" Ralph von Wau Wau added.
The Doc didn't answer.
"Will it make you feel any better about it to call what he does 'PSI,' Doc? Like the way Fogerty
could make the dart board want darts? Like what the Duck does? The cluricaune is here. Our booze is
not. Ergo, a sub-race of dwarves with paranormal powers must exist. You want to call it telekinesis, I
won't stop you. Once you define 'magic' as 'knowledge I don't have yet,' you can stop being afraid of it."
"Well," the Doc said reluctantly, "when I'm holding it in my own hands, I can't very well deny it exists.
But I must say this is aggravating. I was looking forward to getting less open-minded as I aged." He
frowned. "All right: the Daoine Sidh are real. Just don't you say a goddamn word to me about Loch
Ness!"
"My grandfather used to tell me stories about them," Long-Drink said. "Is that how you know about
that stuff, Jake?"