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

Now at last the Sand Slinger thought to raise its foot up from the stream of urine and bring it down upon
its miniscule antagonist. The floor shook with the impact.

Rooster darted aside, jeering.

The giant moved its head from side to side in baffled rage. Brow knitted, it stared down at the three-ton
maul lying atop its anvil. A cunning expression blossomed on its coarse face, and it reached an enormous
hand for the hammer.

"Now!" The shadow-boy anxiously pointed to Blugg's office. It was empty. The door had been left
slammed wide, open and unguarded.

Crash. The hammer slammed down where Rooster had been. Running, stooping, Jane scuttled across
those enormous empty spaces separating her from Blugg's office. She was aghast at her own daring, and
terrified she would be caught. Behind her, the hammer slammed down again. The soles of her feet tingled
with the vibrations. Then she was in the office. She stepped immediately to the side, where the wall
would hide her, and straightened up to get her bearings.

Crash. The hammer fell a third time. People were yelling, running, screaming.

The office was close and cluttered. Technical manuals lay on the floor in heaps. The trash basket
overflowed with litter. Water-stained plans for wyverns obsolete decades ago hung on the walls, along
with thumbtacked production schedules gone brown at the edges, and a SAFETY FIRST poster
showing a cartoon hand holding index finger upward, a ribbon tied in a bow just beneath the second
knuckle.

The sole bit of color came from a supplier's calendar with a picture of naked mermaids, fat as sea cows,
lolling on the rocks. Jane stared at those pink acres of marshmallow-soft flesh for a frozen instant, as if
the image were a window into an alien and threatening universe. Then she shook her head clear and
darted to the desk.

The pressed metal ashtray was exactly where it ought to be. A cigar smoldered on its lip, still damp on
one end. Gingerly, she took the smelly thing between thumb and forefinger and held it aside. Hurry! she
thought. In among the ashes were what looked to be seven crescent moons carved from yellowed ivory.
She picked out two, put down the cigar, and whirled to go.

But then a speck of green caught her eye, and she glanced down in the waste basket. One corner of a
book peeked out from the trash. For no reason that she could think of, she brushed the papers aside to
see what it was. Then she saw and caught her breath.

A grimoire!

It was a thick volume in a pebbled green vinyl cover, with the company logo on the front and beneath
that a title she could not read in raised gold-edged lettering. Three chrome bolts held in the pages so they
could be easily removed and updated. Jane gaped, then came to her senses. Grimoires were valuable
beyond imagining, so rare that each was numbered and registered in the front offices. It was impossible
that one should end up here, in Blugg's office, much less that it would then be thrown away as worthless.

Still .. it wouldn't hurt just to touch it.