"Jeff VanderMeer - A Heart For Lucretia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

dances they did for the men who created them."
Meerkats! This was indeed magical, and it created out of the torn and
wasted landscape some small scrap of hope. Meerkats! He had killed
meerkats for the meat before, but they rarely reached two feet in
height.
For a moment, he considered the possibility that Flesh Dog lied, but
dismissed it: Flesh Dog had taught his father how to read and write.
Flesh
Dog never lied.
"Are they...they are intelligent?"
"Yes," replied Flesh Dog flatly.
Intelligent. He almost laughed. Was he to believe an intelligent toad
next? His heartbeat quickened and with it he could feel his sister's
heart, uneven and diseased, slowly winding down. He sobered.
"Flesh Dog, are these the folk who live underground?"
"Almost certainly," replied Flesh Dog.

When they came before the meerkats, the leader spoke to Gerard,
ignoring
Flesh Dog. The leader was a sleek, jet specimen with amber eyes and the
language it spoke was all trills and clicks. The meerkat soon switched
to
gish when it interpreted the confused look on Gerard's face.
"State your business," it said in a bored voice.
"I need a human heart," Gerard said. "I am willing to trade for it."
A huffing rose from the leader, followed by similar noises from the
other
two.
"Parts," the leader ruminated, his tone bordering on contempt.
"Fifteenth
level." He barked a phrase to his followers and they stepped forward
and
passed a glittering rod in front of first Gerard and then Flesh Dog.
The leader nodded and escorted them to the elevator.

Gerard had seen elevators in books before, but never dreamed he would
one
day ride in one and so, when the doors closed, he bent to his knees and
whispered to Flesh Dog, "Are elevators safe?"
Flesh Dog, sensing the tremor in Gerard's voice, replied, "Hold on to
me
if the motion makes you sick."
And so Gerard did hug Flesh Dog as they descended into the city's
belly.
He clung also to the ruck-sack full of precious stones and old autodoc
parts with which he hoped to woo a human heart.
The levels seemed to crawl by, each more wondrous than the last, more
terrible, more strange. Many of the things they saw, Gerard did not
understand. They saw winged men with no eyes and vats of flesh and
monstrous war engines belching, spitting sparks, and tubes and gears