"Michael Swanwick - Scherzo with Tyrannosaur" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

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Scherzo with Tyrannosaur
by Michael Swanwick

Michael Swanwick, Scherzo with Tyrannosaur
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Copyright (c)1999 Michael Swanwick
First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, July 1999

Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction
Hugo Award Nominee

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A keyboardist was playing a selection of Scarlotti's harpsichord
sonatas, brief pieces one to three minutes long, very complex and refined,
while the Hadrosaurus herd streamed by the window. There were hundreds of the
brutes, kicking up dust and honking that lovely flattened near-musical note
they make. It was a spectacular sight.
But the hors d'oeuvres had just arrived: plesiosaur wrapped in kelp,
beluga smeared over sliced maiasaur egg, little slivers of roast dodo on
toast, a dozen delicacies more. So a stampede of common-as-dirt herbivores
just couldn't compete.
Nobody was paying much attention.
Except for the kid. He was glued to the window, staring with an
intensity remarkable even for a boy his age. I figured him to be about ten
years old.
Snagging a glass of champagne from a passing tray, I went over to stand
next to him. "Enjoying yourself, son?"
Without looking up, the kid said, "What do you think spooked them? Was
it a -- ?" Then he saw the wranglers in their jeeps and his face fell. "Oh."
"We had to cheat a little to give the diners something to see." I
gestured with the wine glass past the herd, toward the distant woods. "But
there are plenty of predators lurking out there -- troodons, dromaeosaurs . .
. even old Satan."
He looked up at me in silent question.
"Satan is our nickname for an injured old bull rex that's been hanging
around the station for about a month, raiding our garbage dump."
It was the wrong thing to say. The kid looked devastated. T. rex a
scavenger! Say it ain't so.