"Gardner Dozois - A Cat Horror Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

been provocation for a fight on another evening. “Yes? Well, I have seen this. There
was one of the People, her name was Lady Jane, and she went near one of the Fast
Dead Things at night, while it was sleeping. And she crawled inside the top of the
Thing, because the night was cold, and it was warm deep up inside the Thing. And
in the morning as I was watching a human came and made the Fast Dead Thing
swallow it, and then the Thing woke up.” He shuddered. “It growled, and then it
roared, and then Lady Jane screamed, and I smelled the hot smell of her blood. The
human got out, and made the Thing open up its smaller mouth in the front, and then
he lifted Lady Jane out. And she was dead. Dead, and cut into pieces! Her head was
cut nearly all the way off, hanging by some fur!”

“Dead!” some of the People moaned. “Dead!”

A scarred old fetal tom named Blackie, who had one ear tom nearly to rags,
said, “You don’t need Dead Things to kill you, young ones!” He lashed his tail and
made the clicking and smacking noise that signified deep contempt among the
People. “Humans will do the job readily enough! Yes, your precious humans, the
things you all live with, willingly! When I was a kitten, some humans put me in a
sack[4], and threw me in the river. Ai, the horror of it!” He shivered and shook
himself convulsively. “It was dark and hot and smothering, and I couldn’t breathe,
and then I was falling, twisting and tumbling and falling, and there was no air to
breathe! My claws were sharp in those days, People, lucky for me, and I ripped my
way out. But then I was in the water! In the water! I was under the water, with it all
around me — over my head! I had to swim, swim for my life, and I nearly died
before my head broke the surface and I could take a breath, and then I had to swim
for a long time before my feet found the ground again, and all the while the water
was pulling at me, sucking at me, trying to pull me down to death!”

A low growl went around the circle of the People. Their eyes gleamed.

“My human goes in the water every day,” a young queen named Spooky said.
“On purpose. She lets it go all over her! She doesn’t try to escape at all! Sometimes
she sits under the water, with only her head outside it!”

The People moaned in horror. “At, they are strange creatures,” Jefferson
muttered. “Strange!”
 “But those were Rogues, those humans who tried to kill you,” a young tom
named Bangers said, somewhat uneasily, as though seeking reassurance. “We’ve all
been chased and kicked by Rogues now and again, or had stones or Hard Clattering
Things thrown at us. That doesn’t mean that our humans would hurt us. My humans
wouldn’t hurt me. They like me! They feed me and pat[5] me whenever I want them
to!”

“I had humans once, too, later on,” Blackie said bitterly. “They fed me and
they patted me — and then they cut my balls off!”

Bangers hissed involuntarily, and many of the People blew their trails out to
several times their normal size.

“It could happen to you, too, young one!” Blackie said. “Don’t you think it