"Wen Spencer - Ukiah 3 - Bitter Waters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spencer Wen)

here, around the corner, and it's really started to pour. Damn, where's that rescue crew?"
Ukiah murmured an answer, trying to coax his mouse back out. It was on the edge of his
influence, though, and frightened. It scurried back and forth on the imagined safety that the boy provided,
hesitant to face the dark alone. Suddenly it slipped into the fast-moving water that chuted down over
slick bare skin. Ukiah squeaked in surprise as the mouse was swept down through a hole between child
and pipe and washed away.
"Ukiah!" Max called over the headset. "What's wrong?"
Ukiah leapt to his feet and bolted toward Max. "I've lost my mouse! I need to get it back."
Max exploded into curses.
The rain beat furiously down now, sheeting off the rest of the world so it seemed like Ukiah
struggled within a pocket universe to save the boy. He rounded the corner and found his partner and Ari
beside an opened manhole, shining lights into the hole.
Max looked up, obviously torn. "Kid, the water is already deep and fast, and it's raining harder
now. We don't have ropes, and you're not even sure what direction to go. Just wait for the rescue crew."
"I've got to go," Ukiah said, wishing Ari wasn't there so he could argue with Max openly.
Perhaps, it was better this way—he could never win arguments with Max. He hadn't considered losing
his mouse when he sent it into the drain—a lost mouse was much too dangerous to the world. Hex had
used a single stolen mouse to create Kittanning. With a second mouse, the Ontongard leader had nearly
remade Max into a clone of Ukiah. Even without the evil intentions of the Ontongard, Ukiah could not
ignore that somehow, some part of the dismembered child Magic Boy, perhaps just a lone mouse, had
become the Wolf Boy, and eventually himself.
He had to get it back. He brushed past Max to the manhole, ignoring the look that spoke
volumes.
***
The sound of water falling out the throats of countless feeder pipes, echoed by curving concrete,
combined into an unending deafening roar. Ukiah climbed down the slick metal ladder into the ink
blackness. The water grabbed his foot as he went to step off the ladder, trying to jerk him under. He
braced himself against the current and found his footing. The water flowed up to his knees, numbingly
cold, seeming nearly solid with the force it applied on him.
Ukiah stood a moment, waiting to adjust to the cave darkness pressing in on him. As his eyes
adapted, the fist-sized disk of filthy concrete illuminated by his flashlight became a curving, grime-coated
wall, a shimmer reflecting off the moving blackness that was water, and the thin paleness where the two
met in a mud-tainted froth. Sound and pressure filled in what he could not see; he sensed the top of the
pipe close to his head and the opposite wall just out of reach and out of sight.
Trying to ignore how little space was left between the flat plain of water and the top arch of the
pipe, Ukiah concentrated on finding the boy and his mouse. Kyle had been west of the manhole, but this
culvert ran north to south. Ukiah replayed the last moments of contact with his mouse. It had rushed
away from him, heading south, not east toward this culvert. Nor could he sense his mouse now, or glean
anything of the boy. Ukiah decided to follow the flow of water and see if there was a main junction pipe.
Letting go of the ladder, he waded with the current, fighting to stay upright. The cement floor, unseen
under the water, sloped with the steep hillside, which would make getting back hard. His flashlight
danced through the cave darkness as he staggered forward.
Fifty feet down, the pipe ended, spilling its water down into a ten-foot-tall main junction pipe
running east to west. The water was deeper, over his knees and creeping toward his hips. Much deeper
and he'd lose his footing against the current completely. And he still wasn't sure if he was going the right
direction. He played his flashlight down the left-hand wall of the pipe, looking for something that led back
north to Kyle.
Max said something to him over the headset, the thunder of water drowning out his words.
"What?" He cupped his free hand over his ear, trying to keep the water's roar out.
"Which way are you going?"