"Wen Spencer - Ukiah 1 - Alien Taste" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spencer Wen)

like a small bobcat, sat on the back seat ledge, a bored veteran traveler.
In Pittsburgh, he often saw dogs in trucks, hanging out the window, nose to the wind. Mom Lara
would love cats at the farm, but Mom Jo's wolf dogs had always made that impossible. Except for a
short-lived kitten and a few alley strays, Ukiah's experiences with cats were ones inside other people's
houses, peering contentedly from a sun-basked window. At least this cat was riding in an accepted cat
fashion: paws curled under and eyes partly slitted with a mix of idle speculation and contempt. Yet it was
so—odd—to see it in a car.
In typical cat fashion, the Manx yawned and started to groom, ignoring him completely. A moment
later the Saab found an opening in the breakdown lane and illegally sped away. Max tried to follow, but was
beaten by a bread truck that immediately stopped, unable to squeeze past the UPS truck in front of them.
 "Max, why do people keep cats as pets?"
"God if I know."
"Why do people keep any pets? Well, I understand dogs and I guess cats kill mice, but why snakes
and hamsters? Why keep turtles?"
"This is not a conversation you have with someone who was up half the night on a cheating
husband stakeout. Oh, not the puppy dog eyes."
"I don't have puppy dog eyes. Wolf eyes maybe, but not puppy dog."
"Okay, okay." Max sipped at his 7-Eleven coffee, made tan by equal parts sugar and cream. "It
could be that humans are pack animals. As we got civilized, the need for a pack disappeared but not the
desire. If you live out in the woods with no one else around, you get lonely, sometimes even loony. Even
living in the city, without family or friends, you feel alienated."
"Get a pet, instant pack. But why only humans? You'd think if it was a good thing, other animals
would do it."
"There's that sign language gorilla. It has a kitten. Gorillas in the wild don't keep cats. You get
civilized, you get pets. Oh Jesus, what's this?" Max frowned at the Cherokee's GPI navigator display as it
beeped and added a traffic hazard directly in front of them. "What the hell is that orange blimp supposed to
be? Ukiah, can you see what's in front of us?"
Ukiah hung far out his window to see around the brown UPS truck in front of them. Fifty feet
ahead, a tanker truck leaned at a drunken angle, a trail of flares set out behind it. "There's a truck broken
down in this lane."
Max cursed and jammed on his left-turn signal. "I told him your bike was at the shop and that I had
to run out and pick you up at your moms'. I said it would take an hour and a half, and he sounded like he
was going to have hysterics. So I told him an hour and that he'd have to fix any speeding ticket I got. I
should have known better. I should have said it would take two hours. No, I should have told him to forget
it. I've got a bad feeling about this case. Kraynak's in Homicide now. What the hell does Homicide want
with us?"
"Do you suppose that's a mark of an intelligent race—that any aliens we find will have pets too?"
Max snorted. "Aliens? I told you not to watch those TV shows. They're all made up. They'll rot
your brain."
Ukiah closed his eyes and considered what had brought aliens to mind. He relived the last few
minutes, tuning out this time the cat and the car, along with Max's ranting. There, suddenly loud without the
other noises to mask it, was the radio. The top news story had been the Mars mission preparing to land.
"They were talking about Martians on the radio. They said," he repeated the words now echoing in his
memory, "in 1996, the first evidence of life on Mars was found on Earth. This week we might find life on
Mars."
"Thank god!" Max exclaimed as the bread truck finally squeezed by the UPS truck into the
breakdown lane. He pushed the Cherokee through the opening, almost touching bumpers with the bread
truck. "They're talking about tiny micros, Ukiah. Like that pond scum stuff."
"So, would intelligent pond scum have pets?"
Max cuffed him without taking his eyes off the traffic. "Don't be silly. Heads up, we're here."