"Peter Watts - Fractals" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watts Peter)

FRACTALS
(or: Reagan Assured Gorbachev of Help Against Space
Aliens)1



Trespassing? Trespassing? You arrogant slant-eyed alien
motherfucker, I used to live here!

***

How long have I wanted to do that? How many years have I
hated them, dreamt that my fists were smashing those faces into
shapes even less human? I can't remember. The anger is
chronic. The anger has always been chronic. And impotent,
until now. The pain in my knuckles throbs like a distant badge
of honour.
It's cold.
The rage is gone, absorbed somehow by the mud and the unlit
piles of lumber and masonry scattered around me. I can barely
focus on my surroundings. The shapes keep changing, hulking
angular monstrosities shifting on all sides. Only the sign at the
front of the lot, the sign he kept pointing at, refuses to move.
I can barely see him in the dark. He's just a few meters away,
but the shadows are so black and he doesn't move at all. What if
I killed him? What if IтАФ
There. He moved a bit. It's okay, I didn't kill him, he's not
deadтАФ
Yet. What if he dies here in the mud?
(So what if he does? Lots more where he came from.)
No. I don't mean that. I can't believe I ever did, I mean, what
if I, what if he dies here, what ifтАФ
What if he lives, and identifies me?

First published in On Spec 7(1), 1995: 31-41.
1
2 Nimbus



A couple of steps forward. A couple more. Okay, he was
about here when he saw me, and then he moved over there and
started shoutingтАФ
He couldn't have seen my face. Even when he came closer,
it's so dark he'd only have seen a silhouette, and then he was
right in front of me andтАФ
I can get away. I can get away. Oh Jesus God I can't believe I
did thisтАФ
Okay. This is a construction site, after all; my car will only
leave one set of tracks in a muddle of hundreds. And the nearest