"Michael Swanwick - The Raggle Taggle Gypsy - O" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

crawl by the density of human traffic. Crow leaned on the horn again and again.

They made a right turn and then another, and then the traffic was gone. Crow threw
the transmission into second and stepped on the accelerator. They were back among
the Mountains of Eternity. From here they could reach any historical era and even,
should they wish, the vast stretches of time that came before and after. All the roads
were clear, and there was nothing in their way.

Less than a month later, subjective time, they were biking down that same road,
arguing. Annie was lobbying for him to get her a sidecar and Crow didn't think much
of that idea at all.

"This here's my hog, goddamnit!" he explained. "I chopped her myselfтАФyou put a
sidecar on it, it'll be all the fuck out of balance."
"Yeah, well, I hope you enjoy jerking off. Because my fucking ass is so goddamn
sore that..."

He'd opened up the throttle to drown out what she was about to say when suddenly
Annie was pounding on his back, screaming, "Pull over!"

Crow was still braking the Harley when she leaned over to the side and began to
puke.

When she was done, Crow dug a Schlitz out of the saddlebags and popped the tab.
Shakily, she accepted it. "What was it!" he asked.

Annie gargled and spat out the beer. "Another premonitionтАФa muckle bad one, I
trow." Then, "Hey. Who do I have to fuck to get a smoke around here?"

Crow lit up a Kent for her.

Midway through the cigarette, she shuddered again and went rigid. Her pupils shrank
to pinpricks, and her eyes turned up in their sockets, so they were almost entirely
white. The sort of thing that would've got her burned for a witch, back in good old
sixteenth-c England.

She raised a hand, pointing. "Incoming. Five of them."

****

They were ugly fuckers, the Basilisks were: black, unornamented two-rotor jobs, and
noisy too. You could hear them miles off.

Luckily, Annie's foresight had given Crow the time to pick out a good defensive
position. Cliff face to their back, rocks to crouch behind, enough of an overhang
they couldn't try anything from above. Enough room to stash the bike, just in case
they came out of this one alive. There was a long, empty slope before them. Their
pursuers would have to come running up it.

The formation of Basilisks thundered closer.