"Kit Reed - Song of the Black Dog" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Kit)

Song of the Black Dog

by Kit Reed
"The black dog is not like any other," the forensics officer says. It is a little incantation.

In the journalists' skybox high above the civic auditorium, Bill Siefert strains to see the distant stage, the
speaker, and, at her back, the beast he is here to deconstruct. That's the way he thinks of it. Siefert hates
anything he doesn't understand. If it doesn't make sense, disassemble it. He's always been uncomfortable
with the idea of supernatural powers, but this is not his stated reason for sneaking into the press box. He
thinks he's here to crack the black dog program and show the people its inner workings. If the wonder
dog is just a dog, then the police department are money-grubbing charlatans and the expose will move
him from unemployed to famous.

He'll be all over CNN. Networks will come calling. Silence the black dog, he thinks, and wonders
where that came from. Stop mizzling and get the story. He needs a job. He needs the attention. He needs
the power. He needs to be more than who he is, and before any of this and all of this Bill Siefert needs to
figure out why this morning, on a perfectly ordinary day, he woke up screaming.

Get the story, he tells himself and does not know what about this makes him so uneasy. Cell phone for
instant screen shots. Notebook, digicorder, nice smile. Seat in the booth. Fake press pass to get him
backstage. Piece of cake.

With the black dog, nothing spins out the way you expect.

"The black dog can cut through the welter of visual and olfactory stimuli in a disaster situation and find
those most in need of rescue," the forensics officer says matter-of-factly, as though this is a given. She is
sleek in the black uniform. Persuasive. It is disturbing. "He is only the first," she says and then she says
portentously, "His descendants will save thousands."

Cut to the chase. Startled, Bill shakes himself. Did I speak? Who?

The speaker glitters in a cone of light, but the wonder dog—if there is one—is nowhere present. Peering
into the shadows behind her, Bill looks for the darker shadow signifying a living creature, reflected light
pinpointed in the eyes. The darkness gives back only darkness. Nothing to see, he tells himself, and
wonders why this comes as a relief. No dog. Another wasted day like so many days in what is shaping
up to be a a wasted life.

With the black dog, the future is open to question.

In the next second he shivers, transfixed. He can't even guess what just happened, but all the furniture in
his head has shifted.

It sees me.

Given that the stage is far, far below, this is unlikely, but the sense that he is being watched is so acute
that all of Bill Siefert's bones begin to itch. No, he tells himself. No way. He swallows hard. but his throat
closes. It's just a dog.

Far below, she continues, "Of course the prototype is a genetic fluke, but one that can be exploited for
the good of all."