"Alan Dean Foster - Glory Lane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

side of town. It was a kick to scratch modern obscenities in the soft
sandstone alongside the ancient drawings. The straights called it
defacement and wailed and screamed. What the hell was the difference
between what he did and what the Indians had done? Probably some of
those little stick figures, crudely colored and inscribed, were just as
obscene as the marks he and his friends made. A thousand years from now
some other dumb archeologists would find Seeth Ransom's initials, and
Piggie's, and Delia's, and prize them for the tie they presented to the bad
ol' twentieth century. The thought made him smile and smiling made him
feel a little better.

By now the streets were pretty empty, the city's solid citizens having
retired to a soporific evening of contem-plating the idiot box, voluntarily
incurring the self-imposed death-state known as Prime Time without
realizing it was a contradiction in terms. Couch potatoes hell, Seeth mused.
The analogy was insulting to tubers.

Not much open now, either. All the malls and most of the markets were
closed. All that stayed active through the Albuquerque night were
7-Elevens, K-Stores, and the oc-casional gas station.

He wandered over to the Shamrock station where Jean worked as a cashier
and they chatted for a while. That was all they could do, since it was
forbidden for her to unlock the office door for anyone after eight o'clock.
That wouldn't have stopped Jean. She went her own way just like Seeth,
but with all the people coming and going, the tourists trickling steadily off
1-40, she didn't want to take the risk no matter how hard he pleaded. She
needed the job. So he yelled at her and she yelled back, and with that
acri-monious farewell ringing in his ears he had continued on his way.

There was always something doing around the Univer-sity of New Mexico.
Several pizza parlors and a club or two never closed. But he didn't have
money to spare for pizza and he sure as hell wasn't interested in crashing
any of the clubs. They played nothing but homogenized pap and their
squeaky-clean patrons wore cotton shirts and shoes with laces. Nor did
they offer the opportunity to pick up girls. Sorority sisters and pretty things
deep into husband-searching tended to view him as something that had
crawled up from beneath the sewers or invaded from another planet.

He knew the truth of it, of course. What they both despised and envied was
his individuality, his readiness to express himself freely and openly when
they were cramped and constrained by society. Screw 'em. He didn't need
that kind of company.

He turned a corner. A police cruiser was coming down the boulevard toward
him. It slowed. Though he kept his gaze on the street ahead he could
sense the cops' eyes following him. He kept his hands outside his pockets
where they could be seen. After a few minutes the patrol car accelerated
slightly and left him in its wake.