"Peter Watts - Bulk Food" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watts Peter)

Over at the turnstiles, Doug Largha swipes his debit card and
passes through. The protesters register vaguely on his radar. Back
in his student days, he considered joining, but only with the hope
of scoring with some of those touchy-feely whale chicks. The
things he did, back then, to get laid.
Hell. The things he does nowтАж

***

A foghorn calls across the Strait. Visibility's low on both sides
of the world; the murk is gray above the waterline, green below.
The sea around Race Rocks is empty. This place used to be a
wildlife sanctuary. Now it's a DMZ.
Two hundred meters out from the islands, perimeter sensors
listen patiently for intruders. There are none. The day's too cold
for tourists, too foggy for spies, too damn wet for most terrestrial
mammals. Nobody tries to cross over the line. Even under the
line, traffic is way down from the old days. An occasional trio of
black-and-white teardrops, each the size of a school bus. Every
now and then a knife-edged dorsal fin, tall as a man. Nothing else.
There was a lot more happening out here a few years ago. Race
Rocks used to be crawling with seals, sea lions, Dall's porpoises. It
was a regular Who's Who back then: Eschrichtius, Phocoena,
Zalophus, Eumetopias.
All that meat has long since been cleaned out. Just one species
comes through here these days: Orcinus. Nobody asks these
visitors for ID. They've got their own way of doing things.
Five kilometers east, the commercial trawler Dipnet wallows
forward at half throttle. Vague gray shapes crowd restlessly along
the gunwales, slick, wet, hooded against the soupy atmosphere.
Even a fog that drains all color from the world can't dampen the
Bulk Food 3

enthusiasm on board. Snatches of song drift across the waves,
male and female voices in chorus.
"And they'll know we are sisters by our love, by our loveтАж"
Twenty-five meters down, a string of clicks ratchets through the
water column. It sounds like the drumming of impatient fingers.

***

Doug's got everything figured. He's found the perfect position;
right next to the rim, where the gangway extends over the tank like
a big fiberglass tongue. Other spectators, with less foresight or less
motivation, fill the bleachers ringing the main tank. Plexi
splashguards separate them from a million gallons of filtered
seawater and the predatory behemoth within. On the far side of the
tank, more fiberglass and a few tons of molded cement
impersonate a rocky coastline. Every few moments a smooth black
back rolls across the surface, its dorsal fin stiff as a horny penis.