"Michael Swanwick - Stations of the Tide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

2. Witch Cults of Whitemarsh
 Gregorian kissed the old woman and threw her from the cliff. She fell toward the cold gray water
headfirst, twisting. There was a small white splash as she hit, plunging deep beneath the chop. She did not
surface. A little distance away, something dark and sleek as an otter broke water, dove, and
disappeared.
"It's a trick," the real Lieutenant Chu said. On the screen Gregorian's face appeared: heavy, mature,
confident. His lips moved soundlessly. Be all that you were meant to be. The bureaucrat had killed the
sound after the fifth repetition, but he knew the words by heart. Give up your weaknesses. Dare to live
forever. The commercial ended, skipped to the beginning, and began again.
"A trick? How so?"
"A bird cannot change into a fish in an instant. That kind of adaptation takes time." Lieutenant Chu
rolled up her sleeve and reached into the fishbowl. The sparrowfish jerked away, bright fins swirling.
Dark sand puffed up, obscuring the tank for an instant. "The sparrowfish is a burrower. It was in the sand
when he thrust the rainbird into the water. One quick movement, like this," she demonstrated, "and the
bird is strangled. Plunge it into the dirt, and simultaneously the fish is startled into swimming."
She set the small corpse down on the table. "Simple, when you know how it's done."
Gregorian kissed the old woman and threw her from the cliff. She fell toward the cold gray water
headfirst, twisting. There was a small white splash as she hit, plunging deep beneath the chop. She did not
surface. A little distance away, something dark and sleek as an otter broke water, dove, and
disappeared.
The bureaucrat snapped off the television.
The government liaison leaned straight-backed against a window, the creases of her uniform imperially
crisp, smoking a thin black cigarillo. Emilie Chu was thin herself, a whippet of a woman, with cynical eyes
and the perpetual hint of a sneer to her lips. "No word from Bergier. It appears my impersonator has
escaped." She stroked her almost-invisible mustache with cool amusement.
"We don't know that he's gone yet," the bureaucrat reminded her. The windows were clear now, and
in the fresh, bright air the encounter with the false Chu seemed unlikely, the stuff of travelers' tales. "Let's
go see the commander."
The rear observatory was filled with uniformed schoolgirls on a day trip from the Laserfield Academy,
who nudged each other and giggled as the bureaucrat followed Chu up an access ladder and through a
hatch into the interior of the gas bag. The hatch closed, and the bureaucrat stood within the triangular
strutting of the keel. It was dark between the looming gas cells, and a thin line of overhead lights provided
more a sense of dimension than illumination. A crewman dropped to the walkway before them.
"Passengers are not--" She saw Chu's uniform and stiffened.
"Commander-Pilot Bergier, please," the bureaucrat said.
"You want to see the commander?" She stared, as if he were a sphinx materialized from nothing to
confront her with a particularly outrageous riddle.
"If it isn't too much trouble," Chu said with quiet menace.
The woman spun on her heel. She led them through the gullet of the airship to the prow, where stairs
so steep they had to be climbed on all fours like a ladder rose to the pilothouse. On the dark wooden
door was the faintest gleam of elfinbone inlay forming a large, pale rose-and-phallus design. The
crewman gave three quick raps, and then seized a strut and swung up into the shadows, as agile as any
monkey. A deep voice rumbled, "Enter."
They opened the door and stepped within.
The pilothouse was small. Its windshield was shuttered, leaving it lit only by a triad of navigation
screens to the fore. It had a lived-in smell of body sweat and stale clothing. Commander Bergier stood
hunched over the screens, looking like an aging eagle, his face a pale beak, suddenly noble when he
raised his chin, a scrawny-bearded poet brooding over the bright terrain of his world. Turning, he raised