"James Patrick Kelly - Fruitcake Theory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

case of holiday spirit, even though he doesn’t know an
elf from an elephant. He wants to do a little shopping.
It’s a security nightmare, but we accommodate him. We
always do because we’re asking for the Kuvat
encyclopedia for Christmas. Not that we know what’s in
it exactly, but these creatures come from a planet a
hundred and thirty light years away. They’re bound to
have a grand unified theory, the secret of cool fusion,
and a cure for cellulite.
=Persons?= The rooster turns toward us. =This one has
hunger.=
"Me too. I haven’t eaten since dinner." Bjorn is always
happy to interact with our charge. "Wait until you see
the food court at this mall. It’s totally grade. Must be
thirty different kinds of ethnic." He’s starting to
bubble with enthusiasm; I give him a needle stare.
"Well, maybe only twenty," he mutters.
=This one has also thirst, persons.=
"This one is called Maggie." I touch my chest.
"Mag-gie." The rooster can’t tell humans apart. This
continues to annoy me; I’ve been following him for four
months and he still doesn’t know who I am.
=Laughing all the way, person, ha, ha, ha.=
There is some debate as to the accuracy of Kuvat
translations.
I’m sick of this rooster. I’ve asked to follow any other
Kuvat, preferably a scarecrow, but I’d even settle for
another rooster. As far as we know, there are four
besides this one. Roosters don’t have names, don’t ask
me why. At first we gave them nicknames -- Dodo, Dopey,
Dumbo, Ding-dong, and Dufus -- only when Balfour found
out, she pitched a fit. Our job was to follow, observe,
and protect the Kuvat, she said, not to make snide
remarks. She doesn’t even like us calling them roosters.
When she overheard Jasper laughing about "Dopey" back in
August, she pulled him from the following team and
banished him to Waste Assessment, where he sifts through
Kuvat garbage and samples their sewage.
This rooster has been the most rambunctious tourist of
the five. Since the Kuvat landed in May, he’s been to
the pyramids and the Taj Mahal and the Eiffel Tower.
He’s crazy about zoos and disneys. He saw the third game
of the п08 World Series and was a Special Guest at the
Sixty-Sixth World Science Fiction Convention. He seems
to be partnered with Kasaan, the scarecrow who is the
leader of the Kuvat expedition.
Bjorn has signed on to the theory that the roosters are
scouting us and make detailed reports back to the
scarecrows, who rarely leave the compound we’ve built
around their starship. This theory is conveniently