"Wen Spencer - Tinker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spencer Wen)

Between the whistle and thunder of the fireworks, the impatient hum of distant traffic, the
echoing blare of tugboat horns, the shushing of the siphon still draining magic off the
electromagnet, and the thumping of her boots, she nearly didn't hear the wargs approaching. A
howl rose, harsh and wild, from somewhere toward the airport. She stilled her foot, then reached
out with an oil-stained finger to snap off the siphon. The shushing died away, and the large disc
at the end of the crane boom started to gleam violet again.
In a moment of relative silence, she heard a full pack in voice, their prey in sight. While the
elfin rangers killed the packs of wargs that strayed too close to Pittsburgh, one heard their
howling echoing up the river valleys quite often. This sound was deeper, though, than any wargs
she'd heard before, closer to the deep-chest roar of a saurus. As she tried to judge how close the
wargs wereтАФand more important, if they were heading in her directionтАФSt. Paul started to ring
midnight.
"Oh no, not now," she whispered as the church bells drowned out the hoarse baying.
Impatiently, she counted out the peals. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
In another dimension infinitesimally close and mind-bogglingly far, the Chinese powered
down their hyperphase gate in geosynchronous orbit, and yanked Pittsburgh back off the world of
Elfhome. Returning to Earth reminded Tinker of being on the edge of sleep and having a
sensation of falling so real that she would jerk back awake, flat in bed so she couldn't actually
have fallen anywhere. The gate turned off, the universe went black and fell away, and then, snap,
she was sitting in the crane's operating chair, eyes wide open, and nothing had moved.
But everything had changed.
A hush came with Shutdown. The world went silent and held its breath. All the city lights
were out; the Pittsburgh power grid shut down. The aurora dancing along the Rim dissipated,
replaced by the horizon-hugging gleam of light pollution, as if a million bonfires had been lit. A
storm wind whispered through the silent darkness, stirred up as the weather fronts coming across
Ohio collided with the returning Pittsburgh air. On the wind came a haze that smudged what had
been crystalline sky.
"Oh, goddamn it. You would think that after twenty years they would figure out a saner way
of doing this. Let's get the power back on! Come on."
The wargs took voice again, only a block away and closing fast.
Was she safe in the crane? If the oncoming menace had been a saurus, she'd say she was safe
on the high tower, for while the saurus was a nightmarish cousin of the dinosaur, it was a natural
creature. Apparently designed as weapons of mass destruction in some ancient magical war,
wargs were far more than pony-sized wolves; it was quite possible they could climb.
But could she make it to her workshop trailer, the walls and windows reinforced against such
a possible attack?
Tinker dug into the big side pocket of her carpenter pants, took out her night goggles, and
pulled them on. In the green wash of the goggles' vision, she then saw the elf. He was coming at
her over the burned-out booster rockets, dead cars, and obsolete computers. Behind him, the
wargs checked at the high chain-link fence of the scrap yard. She got the impression of five or six
of the huge, wolflike creatures as they milled there, probably balking more at the metal content of
the fence than at its twelve-foot height or the additional three-foot razor-wire crown. Magic and
metal didn't mix. Even as she whispered, "Just leave! Give up!" the first warg backed up, took a
running start at the fence, and leaped it, clearing it by an easy three or four feet.
"Oh, shit!" Tinker yanked on her gloves, swung out of the open control cage, and slid down
the ladder.
"Sparks?" she whispered, hoping the backup power had kicked in on her computer network.
"Is the phone online?"
"No, Boss," came the reply on her headset, the AI annoyingly chipper.
Her fuel cell batteries kept her computer system operational. Unfortunately, the phone