"Howard Waldrop - Winter Quarters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

The place was mobbed. I mean outside. The campus cops had a metal detector outside the front door.
City cops were parked a block away, just off campus.
I looked in the box. There was a double-bladed Mixmaster and a big glass bowl.
I threaded my way through the crowd and walked up to the campus cops, bold as brass.
"What's in the box, doc?" he said, recognizing me and looking at my wristbadge.
I opened it and showed him. "For the mai-tais at the social hour," I said. He looked at it, handed it
around the detector, passed it in front of the sniffer dog. The dog looked at it like it was the least
interesting thing on the earth. Then the dog looked east, whined and barked.
"That ain't his bomb bark," said the K-9 cop. "He's been acting funny all morning."
"Can I go in now?" I asked.
"Oh, sure. Sorry," said the main cop, handing me the box once I went through the metal detector with
the usual nonsense.
The crowd, barred from coming in without badges, swayed back and forth and shined preprinted laser
messages into any camera pointed toward them, or waved old-fashioned signs. A couple of people from
my department were in there with them.



-<*>-



Dr. Bob's speech, "Long-Term Implications of Pleistocene Faunal Retrieval on Resuscitated Species:
An Overview," was supposed to start at 1300, and by 1215 the place was full, including plenty of people
with signs and, I saw, Professor Somebody from Somewhere I'd seen on the news. The most ominous
thing: in the program, the last fifteen minutes was to be Q and A discussion.
It was a big lecture hall, with a wall to the right of the platform leading out to where I knew the
building's loading dock was. The wall blocked an ugly ramp from view and destroyed most of the
acoustics -- it had been a local pork-barrel retrofit ten years ago. Bureaucratic history is swell, isn't it?



-<*>-



At 1255 Dr. Bob came in. He went up to the podium. There was mild applause and some sibilant
hissing. Really.
"Thank you, thank you very much. Normally I would introduce the speaker, but hey! That's me!" There
was some disturbance out at the hall doors. "I know you're all as anxious as I am for me to start. But
first -- a small presentation that may -- or may not -- shed some light on my talk. I honestly don't know
what to expect any more than you do." A boo came from the back of the hall, loud and clear.
The lights went down, and I heard the big loading dock doors rattle up. Grey daylight came up from
the ramp and--
--in came something:
It was a tall thin man, bent forward at the waist, covered in a skin garment from head to foot. He had a
tail like a horse, and what I hoped were fake genitals high up on the buttocks. His head was a fur mask
and above it were two reindeer antlers. The face ended in a long shaggy beard from the eyes down and