"Nebula Awards 2002 - The Nominated Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Awards)

theropod, but whose limbs—all of them—were missing and whose tail was a crushed-looking stump. Several
long-healed scars criss-crossed his abdomen and where his eyes should have been were empty sockets.
“Good morning, Hetman,” Tom said to the figure on the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Not so bad.” Hetman’s voice was faint and raspy, always a little more so in the morning. “I had an odd dream.
Odd, but pleasant.”
“What was it?” Doc asked, resting his forepaws on the bed railing.
“Very odd. Very odd indeed.” Hetman turned his head toward the voices. “Can you imagine me riding on a
horse’s back?”
“I can, old friend.” Doc closed his eyes. “Like Zagloba, the Cossack—rebellious, reckless, full of life—riding with
incomparable skill.” He opened his eyes again and smiled. “It must have been a splendid dream.”
Hubert and Diogenes stood at the bed railing, ready to move Hetman downstairs to breakfast.
“Like some help?” Tom offered.
“They can manage.” Doc spoke for them. Hubert and Diogenes were quite literate and articulate but spoke only
when necessity dictated. “Thank you all the same, but you better get downstairs before Jean-Claude and Pierrot get
impatient. You remember yesterday.”
 The day before, Jean-Claude and Pierrot chanted “Meat! Meat! Breakfast Meat!” until even the little ones who ate
nothing but soy pellets and oatmeal shouted along.
Tom nodded. He looked at the other saurs who had still not gone down to breakfast: Agnes, Sluggo, Kara,
Preston and Bronte. All of them were looking up at Tom except for Bronte. The bright green apatosaur was gazing in
the direction of Hetman’s bed.
Tom gave them an asymmetrical grin before leaving the room. “Well don’t wait too long.”
When he was gone, Hetman whispered, “Check the egg! I twisted in my sleep last night. I’m afraid I may have
hurt it!”
Hubert turned Hetman gently on his side and lifted his pillow as Doc watched. Under the pillow was a pale
yellow egg, no more than a few centimeters long.
“It’s fine,” said Doc.
“Don’t let Doc pick it up,” said Agnes. “The clumsy oaf.”
“My dear Agnes, I had no intention.”
Sluggo had already run over to retrieve a tiny cardboard box stuffed with cotton, hidden behind the chest near
the window, where the blankets and covers were kept. He pushed it back along the floor with his snout. Diogenes
picked up the egg and carefully placed it in the little box.
Agnes nudged past Sluggo and examined it, almost sniffing it, in search of the slightest possible fracture. “I guess
it looks okay.”
Kara butted Agnes with her head. She was an apatosaur, but her head was big—and hard. “Let Bronte see. It’s her
egg, after all.”
“Oh. Right.” Agnes stepped back and let Bronte timidly press in.
As Bronte stared, a set of three tiny furrows took their place on her forehead. She worried, she pitied, she
pondered, all at once as she took in the egg’s contours and slightly rough surface. She held her breath and stared.
They all did, gathered around the cardboard box, except for Hetman, who listened as carefully as the others
watched.
“The shell looks so frail,” whispered Sluggo.
“Are you an idiot?” said Agnes. “Have you touched it? It’s like granite. She won’t have the strength to break
through that shell.”
“Or he,” Doc suggested.
“What do you know?” Agnes grumbled.
“What do any of us know?”
Agnes grumbled again, but left it at that.
None of them knew if the time was soon for the first hairline cracks to form on the shell—for the little creature
who might be within to break through the calcium walls of her prison and her protection—or his. Now. Later. Or
ever.