"Gene Wolfe - The Ziggurat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

Brook said, "Don't freak out. She's got it coming."
"I know she does," Emery told him. "So do I, and we're both going to get it. I don't
mind for my sake, but I mind terribly for hers. It was my job -- my duty -- to--"
On the front porch Jan exclaimed, "Hey!" Presumably she was speaking to one of
the twins.
"I thought you handled yourself really well," Brook said.
 Emery managed to smile. "That's another thing. It's my job to teach you how that
sort of thing's done, and I didn't. Don't you see that I let her leave -- practically made
her go -- before she'd agreed to what I wanted? I should have moved heaven and earth
to keep her here until she did, but I pushed her out the door instead. That's not how
you win, that's how you lose."
"You think the sheriff might get your gun back?"
"I hope not." Emery took off his coat and hung it on the peg nearest the front door.
For Brook's sake he added, "I like to shoot, but I've never liked shooting animals."
Outside, the sound diminished by distance and the snow, Jan screamed.
Emery was first out of the door, but was nearly knocked off the porch by Brook.
Beyond the porch's meager shelter, half obscured by blowing snow, the black
Lincoln's hood was up. Jan sprawled in the snow, screaming. One of the twins
grappled a small, dark figure; the other was not in sight.
Brook charged into the swirling snow, snow so thick that for a moment he
vanished completely. Emery floundered through shin-high snow after him, saw a
second small stranger appear -- as it seemed -- from the Lincoln's engine
compartment, and a third emerge from the interior with his rifle in its hand, the dome
light oddly spectral in the deepening gloom. For a moment he received the fleeting
impression of a smooth, almond-shaped brown face.
The rifle came up. The diminutive figure (shorter than Brook, hardly larger than
the twins) jerked at its trigger. Brook grabbed it and staggered backward, falling in
the snow. The struggling twin cried out, a childish shriek of pain and rage.
Then their attackers fled -- fled preposterously slowly through snow that was for
them knee high, but fled nonetheless, the three running clumsily together in a dark,
packed mass that almost vanished before they had gone twenty feet. One turned,
wrestled the rifle's lever, jerked the rifle like an unruly dog, and ran again.
Emery knelt in the snow beside Jan. "Are you all right?"
She shook her head, sobbing like a child.
The twin embraced him, gasping, "She hit me, she hit me." He tried to comfort
both, an arm for each.
Later -- though it seemed to him not much later -- Brook draped his shoulders with
his double mackinaw, and he realized how cold he was. He stood, lifting the twin, and
pulled Jan to her feet. "We'd better get back inside."
"No!"
He dragged her after him, hearing Brook shut the Lincoln's passenger's-side door
behind them.
By the time they reaches the cabin, Jan was weeping again. Emery put her back in
the chair she had occupied a few minutes before. "Listen! Listen here, even if you
can't stop bawling. One of the twins is gone. Do you know where she is?"
 Sobbing, Jan shook her head.
"That girl with the hood? She hit Mama, and Aileen ran away." The remaining
twin pointed.
Brook gasped, "They didn't hurt her, 'Layna?"
"They hurt me. They hit my arm." She pushed back her sleeve, wincing.