"Charles Stross - Rogue Farm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

teen-ager's beard all along the Cumbrian hilltops. They didn't say much: Joe, because he
never did, and Maddie, because there wasn't anything that she wanted to say. Silence
kept her personal demons down. They'd known each other for many years, and even
when there wasn't anything to say they could cope with each other's silence. The voice
radio on the windowsill opposite the cast-iron stove stayed off, along with the TV set
hanging on the wall next to the fridge. Breakfast was a quiet time of day.

"Dog's not answering," Joe commented over the dregs of his coffee.

"He's a good dog." Maddie glanced at the yard gate uncertainly. "You afraid he's going to
run away to Jupiter?"

"He was with me in the shed." Joe picked up his plate and carried it to the sink, began
running hot water onto the dishes. "After I cleaned the lines I told him to go take the
herd up the paddock while I did the barn." He glanced up, looking out the window with
a worried expression. The Massey-Fergusson was parked right in front of the open barn
doors as if holding at bay the mountain of of dung, straw, and silage that mounded up
inside like an invading odious enemy, relic of afrosty winter past.

Maddie shoved him aside gently and picked up one of the walkie-talkies from the charge
point on the window sill. It bleeped and chuckled at her. "Bob, come in, over". She
frowned. "He's probably lost his headset again."

Joe racked the wet plates to dry. "I'll move the midden. You want to go find him?"

"I'll do that." Maddie's frown promised a talking-to in store for the dog when she caught
up with him. Not that Bob would mind: words ran off him like water off a duck's back.
"Cameras first." She prodded the battered TV set to life and grainy bisected views
flickered across the screen, garden, yard, dutch barn, north paddock, east paddock, main
field, copse. "Hmm."

She was still fiddling with the smallholding surveillance system when Joe clambered back
into the driver's seat of the tractor and fired it up once more. This time there was no
cough of black smoke, and as he hauled the mess of manure out of the barn and piled it
into a three-metre high midden, a quarter of a ton at a time, he almost managed to
forget about the morning's unwelcome visitor. Almost.

By late morning the midden was humming with flies and producing a remarkable stench,
but the barn was clean enough to flush out with a hose and broom. Joe was about to
begin hauling the midden over to the fermentation tanks buried round the far side of the
house when he saw Maddie coming back up the path, shaking her head. He knew at
once what was wrong.

"Bob," he said, expectantly.

"Bob's fine. I left him riding shotgun on the goats." Her expression was peculiar. "But
that farm --"

"Where?" he asked, hurrying after her.