"Kate Wilhelm - Scream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

Strut and puff, you little bastard, I thought at him. No one protested.

The same ruins lay everywhere in the city. After the first hour it was simply boring. My bicycle was more
awkward than going on foot, since I had to carry it over rubble as much as I got to ride it. I abandoned it
finally. I found the Miami River and dutifully got a sample. It was the color of tea, very clear. I followed
the river a long time, stopped for my lunch, and followed it some more. Ruins, sand, junk, palm trees.
Heat. Silence. Especially silence. I was not aware of when I began to listen to the silence, but I caught
myself walking cautiously, trying to be as quiet as the city, not to intrude in any way. The wind in the dry
fronds was the only thing I heard. It stopped, then started again, and I jerked around. I went inside a
building now and then, but they were worse than the ruined streets. Rusty toys, appliances, moldering
furniture, or piles of dust where the termites had been, chairs that crumbled when I touched them, and the
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heat and silence.

I got bored with the river and turned in to what had been a garden park. Here the vegetation was
different. A banyan tree had spread unchecked and filled more than a city block. A flock of blackbirds
arose from it as I approached. The suddenness of their flight startled me and I whirled around, certain
that someone was behind me. Nothing. Vines and bushes had grown wild in the park and were
competing with trees for space -- a minijungle. There were thousands of parakeets, emerald green,
darting, making a cacophony that was worse than the silence. I retraced my steps after a few minutes.
There might have been water in there, but I didn't care. I circled the park and kept walking.

The feeling that I was being followed grew stronger, and I stopped as if to look more closely at a weed,
listening for steps. Nothing. The wind in some pampas grass, the louder rustle of palm fronds, the return
of the blackbirds. And in the distance the raucous cries of gulls. The feeling didn't go away, and I walked
faster and sweated harder.

I got out my kit and finished the last of the beer in the shade of a live oak with branches eighty feet long
spreading out sideways in all directions. Whatever had poisoned Miami and reduced its population to
zero hadn't affected the flora. The wind started, the daily storm. I sat in the doorway of a stinking
apartment building and watched sheets of water race down the street. After the storm passed I decided
to go back and try to get Corrie to go to bed with me. It never occurred to me to snuggle up to Delia,
who seemed totally asexual. Delia and J.P., I thought.

Corrie was alone, and she said no curtly. She was as hot as I was and as tired. But she had a working
lab set up, complete with microscopes and test tubes and flasks of things over Bunsen burners. She
glanced contemptuously at the collecting bottle that I handed her. They knew about me, all of them.

"What did I do wrong?"

"Label it, please. Location, depth, source, time of day. Anything else you can think of that might be
helpful."

Her tone said, and leave me alone because I have real work to do. She turned back to her microscope.