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

when she was a little girl. She was walking home from school, through the S734
sector of AmerCity, when she saw a small shape slink round the corner in front of
her. She stopped dead in her tracks, and stared at it. Something, about a foot high
and covered in short gray fur, sat and looked back at her from about ten feet away. it
had green eyes, long hairs growing out of its cheeks and a thin tail which it curled
neatly around its feet. It was not, my grandmother realized, human.
Very quietly, she squatted down so as to see the animal on its own level. It
carried on looking at her gravely, sniffing slightly. My grandmother looked and
looked, noticed the way the pupils in the eyes ran up and down, saw the sturdy little
paws planted firmly together; and then the creature moved. Holding her breath, and a
little frightened, my grandmother watched as the animal sloped carefully toward her,
following an invisible curved path as though it was walking along a street she
couldnтАЩt see. It paused after a few feet and cocked one of its ears, as if listening.
Then it walked right up to her.
Not really knowing what to do, my gran carefully raised one of her hands until
it was in front of the animalтАЩs face. Equally carefully, the animal pointed its nose
forward and sniffed her hand. It pushed forward with the whole of its head, rubbing
its face against her knuckles, bending its head round and making a soft and throaty
humming noise. It looked up at her and made an odd sound, like a door falling open
in an abandoned house, and then it rubbed its head against her hand again like a kiss.
There was a noise behind her and my grandmother turned to see a man
walking across the intersection about twenty yards back. Her mouth was half open
to say something, to call him over, and then she clamped it shut. When she turned
round the animal was gone, and she never saw it again.
She ran home then, and burst into the kitchen shouting. At first her folks
thought she was telling tales, but the more she told them the more they had to admit
it sounded like a cat. They sent out a search party and looked for five hours, but
they didnтАЩt find it.
My grandmother spent the rest of her life wishing the man hadnтАЩt chosen that
moment to cross the street and make a noise, and that sheтАЩd known that what cats
liked was to be tickled behind the ears and rubbed under the chin. She may have
been the last person who ever saw it, and she wished with all her heart she could
have said goodbye from us in-the proper way.
And she told me about it, and I listened, and here I am today. Because
although everyone knows there canтАЩt be any animals left now, there are those of us
who still look. We have the faith. I do, anyway. Chen has something else.
Chen may have seen an animal. He thinks he did. Thirty-five years ago, when
wandering around a disused sector in AfriCity, he saw a shadow move high up in a
tower where the floors had caved in. A shape swung across a gap. His glimpse of it
lasted less than four seconds. He was doing a lot of drugs at the time, but he says it
wasnтАЩt like that. He knows how unlikely it is, but he thinks it might have been a
primate. Something stirred the air, something that wasnтАЩt him moved with a mind of
its own. It was something different, something that wasnтАЩt us, wasnтАЩt part of the
noisy machine that chugs away in our tiny claustrophobic world. He stopped doing
drugs then, because he realized what he was trying to escape from, and what he was
looking for. HeтАЩs been searching ever since, at first on his own, and then officially.
As I said, itтАЩs not faith with him. itтАЩs need. It has been his life, and itтАЩs the nearest
heтАЩs got to something that makes him happy.
Governments give us money and all the backup we could ever need. We have
Intercontinent Passes that mean customs and immigration can just fuck right off as