"Thomas A. Easton - Down on the Truck Farm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

Nickers nodded. “Their backs are okay, but they still can't make the long trips.” He led them to the first
of the barn's bays and opened its door to reveal an immense genimal with six legs and a flattened back.
The floor was covered with hay. A larger door at the other end of the bay opened to the outside. “We
turned to peccary stock. We handled the back by giving it an extra pair of legs. Had to double the rib
cage and pectoral girdle to make them work, but we got a double heart-lung system in the process, and
that made the stamina beautiful.”

“Couldn't you have done that with a Greyhound?” asked Jimmy's Dad.

Nickers shrugged. “We tried. But it didn't turn out very well. And besides, we liked the name we got this
way. We call ‘em Roadhogs.”
He led them past other bays. One contained a Roadhog with a bus-pod strapped on, and Jimmy realized
why the gengineers had designed the back to be flat. Another contained a female Roadhog lying on its
side while a litter of young rooted at her belly, nursing. In the last, a female displayed a bulging belly. “As
you can see,” said Nickers, “we've entered the production phase. And in case you're wondering, the
mating is handled by artificial insemination. The Bioform Regulatory Agency insisted that we remove any
ability to respond to heat pheromones.”

As he held the barn door open for them, he added, “Want some coffee?” Jimmy and his Dad both
nodded. He pointed-"Over here. It's the maternity ward for the trucks."-and led them to a small waiting
room in the next barn.

When Jimmy entered the room, he found two young people clad in coveralls. They were not much older
than he, and they wore shoulder-patches marked with the farm's distinctive logo, a black-eared white
beagle. Nickers closed the door, and the stertorous sounds of idling trucks elsewhere in the barn were
slightly muffled. “Two of our trainees,” he said. “Julie, Dan, this is Jimmy Brane.”

Julie and Dan quickly finished their drinks, said “Work to do,” and left. When the others had full cups
from the dispenser on the wall, Nickers showed them more bays, each of these containing a pregnant or
nursing truck. Most showed their bulldog ancestry very clearly in their flattened faces. A few had a more
wolfish appearance. “Husky stock,” said Nickers. “For the far north.” In each case, the trucks’ collar
ornaments had been removed and hung from hooks on the walls.

Jimmy was pouring the last of his coffee into his mouth, thinking that it was a poor substitute for
honeysuckle wine, when a sudden shout broke the quiet of the ward: “Get the tractor! Hurry!”

“Come on!” Nickers cried, throwing his empty cup into the nearest waste basket. “Here's something
most visitors don't get to see.” They ran behind him to the bay at the far end of the barn and crowded
together to peer through the glass. “Look at that big mother! That's our vet.” Nickers pointed at a small
woman in a white coat who was leaning over a truck whose sides, swollen until she looked more like an
Army tank than an oversized, civilian dog, heaved with the convulsions of labor. The truck's panting
breaths echoed in the bay.

The great door at the end of the bay was creaking upward. As soon as there was room, an old,
gasoline-powered farm tractor roared in, and a coveralled young man jumped off its seat.

“Chains!” cried the vet, and her assistant unwound heavy steel chains from the rear of the tractor and
handed them to her.

Nickers explained: “It's a hard birth. With cattle, a come-along will do, but that just isn't powerful enough