"Michael Swanwick - Cold Iron" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

"Yes, sir!"

For a long time Blugg glared at them, motionless, silent, unblinking. A muscle in the back of Jane's left leg
began to tremble with the effort of standing still. She was sure he was going to ask what she was doing in
his office. Despair welled up within her, a force so overwhelming that once it started to leak from her
eyes she knew it would fill the room and drown them all.

"You . . . little . . . vermin," he said at last. "There's nothing I'd like better than to strangle each and every
one of you with my bare hands. I could do it, too—don't think you'd be missed! You eat like pigs and
then spend half the day sitting on your thumbs." He walked down the line looking them each in the eye.
When he came to Jane she again thought he would ask why she had invaded his office, but he did not.

"All right," he said at last, "line up by height, and out the east door doubleti—where's the shadow-boy?"

"Here, sir," the shadow-boy said meekly. Jane started. She hadn't realized he was standing beside her.

Blugg rocked slowly on his heels, sweeping his gaze up and down the workbench, savoring their fear.
Then he snapped, "All right, doubletime out—I've got some special work duty for you little shits. Now!"
They were quick-marched, Blugg cursing them every step of the way, out the east door, past the loading
docks and around the steam hammer works. A brace of loaders were parked in front of the orange
smithy, so they took a detour through the old file works building, which had begun long ago as a covered
yardway connecting the planing shed to the machine shop and then been expanded and still later, after the
new file works building was dedicated, renovated into a clutch of utility rooms.

Blugg had still not said anything of Jane's being in his office. She was beginning to dare hope that all that
had happened had driven it from his mind.

"You!" He grabbed Jane by her collar, half-choking her, and kicked open a door. "Wait in here. If you're
not here when I return, you know what'll happen to you."

He flung her inside and slammed the door.

The hurrying footsteps of the children faded away, and all was still.

2.
The room was empty. One wall was all windows from waist-high to the ceiling, panes painted over in a
motley, unplanned pattern of grey and dull blue to reduce environmental distraction and promote worker
efficiency. Pale light shone through them, wintry weak and shadowless. Thin cracks where the paint had
contracted by the edges of the sash bars shone painfully bright.

Beneath the windows a long lab bench was cluttered with testing equipment. Three oscilloscopes
shivered liquidly, square-cornered sine waves slowly creeping across their screens. White smocks had
been hastily hung over wall pegs or left draped atop high wooden stools, as if the low-level
technomancers who ordinarily worked here had been suddenly driven away by some industrial disaster.
To the far side of the room, a new-model dragon's eyeball, as tall as she was, peered from a testing box.
Click. It swiveled to look at her.

Jane shivered miserably. She tried to picture what punishment Blugg would inflict on her for her crime,
and could not. Whatever it was, it would be bad. She walked slowly across the room and back again,