"Michael Marshall Smith - Dying" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Michael Marshall)

тАЬWhy do you say that?тАЭ
тАЬBecause itтАЩs happened before. Five times.тАЭ
тАЬSix,тАЭ Chen said, waving for more coffee.
тАЬBut,тАЭ I said, тАЬweтАЩve had over sixty faxes that were complete fakes. Mocked
up in a lab, no object there at all. So itтАЩs rare anyway.тАЭ
тАЬAnd thereтАЩs a chance it could be real?тАЭ
Her eyes were too wide, her mouth too ready to smile, for me to say anything
crushingly realistic. Chen wasnтАЩt looking at me, but he was waiting, too.
тАЬYes,тАЭ I said. тАЬIt could be an animalтАЩs.тАЭ
 I donтАЩt know why it falls to me to say the word. I try not to. We all do,
especially Chen. Most of the time we just talk about тАЬthemтАЭ or seeing тАЬone.тАЭ We
have books lined round the office, floor to ceiling, with pictures of every one
imaginable, every one that existed. Chen knows the names, habits, and particulars of
about five thousand. IтАЩve tested him, and he does. Sometimes we talk about them,
try to describe them to each other, speculate about which one weтАЩd most like to see.
But most of the time itтАЩs тАЬthem.тАЭ Another protection mechanism, another way of not
hoping too much.
Chen and I are funded by the World Government. WeтАЩre secure; itтАЩs a high
priority. Miranda is a student on secondment from PsychStat. SheтАЩs been on
secondment for rather a long time now, and we pretend she isnтАЩt in when they call to
politely inquire when sheтАЩs coming back. SheтАЩs caught the bug from us, and itтАЩs a
rare bug, so we let her stay. Not a lot of people know about us, but itтАЩs no secret.
Our job is to watch, and to wait. Our job is to sit in our office, listening for the
phone, watching the transfax tray, in case someone, somewhere, sees an animal. And
if someone says they have, we do what weтАЩre doing now: get the hell out there as
quick as we can. And then, of course, we troop home again, because theyтАЩre all
hoaxes. Everybody knows there are no animals anymore. A chimpanzee called
Howard was the last one, and he died seventy years ago.
What can I say? We fucked up. We thought we could go on building the
Cities, planting and growing concrete and steel until it covered every square inch of
every continent, without it ruining the world. We thought, or seemed to, that the
animals would get by, find a way of coping. We let people kill them for skins, or
ornaments, or food. We let tourists carve initials on their homes. We talked about
economic necessity, about quality of life for humans. If push came to shove, we
thought the zoos would be enough.
But they werenтАЩt. Turns out the animals.тАЭ didnтАЩt like the zoos so much after
all. They put up with them for a while and then, as if on cue, they all gave up and
rather pointedly died. Then we looked around the cities weтАЩd wrought and realized
that they were empty. Between the teeming people, down the sides of the endless
streets, above the continual gleam, there was nothing left but space. Suddenly we
realized we were alone, and beneath the ever-present clatter of humankind, the world
seemed very quiet.
To some of us, anyway. I guess most people around today donтАЩt care that
much. After all, theyтАЩve never known any different. I havenтАЩt. ThereтАЩs not been a
single confirmed sighting of an animal in my lifetime.
The thing with me was my grandmother. She was a rather strange old lady, or
as my mother would have it, тАЬbonkers.тАЭ But she also had a lot of time for me, and I
for her, and she told me things about her life that I donтАЩt think anyone else ever
knew.
The story I could hear time and again was about how she saw a cat once,