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Ribofunk :: Филиппо Пол Ди
Страница: 65 из 156The portion of the Blankie between the boy's legs elongated like a pseudopod or flap and reached up to cap and drink the urine for its own metabolic purposes, simultaneously cleaning and drying the infant's wet skin.
The bird dropped down into the crib while the Blankie was preoccupied. It jabbed its beak into the Blankie. Then, in one spastic implosive moment it pumped the contents of its nonbasal nasal sacs into the Blankie.
In a flash, its load of venom delivered, the bird darted to the rim of the crib and launched itself toward the window.
Now alert, the window caught it instantly in a flash-extruded web of Ivax Stickum.
The bird self-destructively exploded, charring the windowframe.
In the crib the Blankie was writhing and churning like a wounded octopus. Fractal blooms whipped up from it, then fell across the baby, who began to cry.
Within a second or two, the blooms coalesced into a blue webwork. When a strand fell across the baby's mouth, its cries ceased.
The door to the nursery flew open and assorted kibernetics appeared.
But it was too late.
The Blankie tightened its embrace like a basal anaconda.
The sounds of snapping bones were registered by the confused and helpless kibes.
***
I popped the silver datapins from the player, abruptly terminating the sounds of little Harry Day-Lewis's death, collected less than a day ago. Although I had watched the tragedy unfold a dozen times since then, I hadn't quite yet gotten used to that fatal, snapping-sticks sound. I doubted I ever would.
I was sitting in my office in the building that housed the Boston branch of the North American Union's Internal Recon and Security division. Although I had occupied this fiftieth-floor corner room for sixteen months, since my last promotion, it still felt alien to me. All those years operating my own private investigating firm out of increasingly cheaper quarters had left me unused to luxuries such as Organogenesis self-cleaning carpets and Zeneca squirmonomic chairs. Not to mention the steady posting to my eft-account.
But I had had to get out of the PI biz after the job I had done for Geneva Hippenstiel-Imhausen. That had been my last case before my crackup.
While booting her husband, I had lost my sidekick, a useless low-end splice named Hamster. If you had asked me prior to the murder of the cut-rate transgenic what the little shag meant to me, I would have said zepto-nothing. But there was a lot I hadn't known about myself back then, and my fatherly affection for the splice had been one such secret.
I had purchased Hamster right after my wife left me and apparently had transferred a lot of unresolved feelings to it.
The bird dropped down into the crib while the Blankie was preoccupied. It jabbed its beak into the Blankie. Then, in one spastic implosive moment it pumped the contents of its nonbasal nasal sacs into the Blankie.
In a flash, its load of venom delivered, the bird darted to the rim of the crib and launched itself toward the window.
Now alert, the window caught it instantly in a flash-extruded web of Ivax Stickum.
The bird self-destructively exploded, charring the windowframe.
In the crib the Blankie was writhing and churning like a wounded octopus. Fractal blooms whipped up from it, then fell across the baby, who began to cry.
Within a second or two, the blooms coalesced into a blue webwork. When a strand fell across the baby's mouth, its cries ceased.
The door to the nursery flew open and assorted kibernetics appeared.
But it was too late.
The Blankie tightened its embrace like a basal anaconda.
The sounds of snapping bones were registered by the confused and helpless kibes.
***
I popped the silver datapins from the player, abruptly terminating the sounds of little Harry Day-Lewis's death, collected less than a day ago. Although I had watched the tragedy unfold a dozen times since then, I hadn't quite yet gotten used to that fatal, snapping-sticks sound. I doubted I ever would.
I was sitting in my office in the building that housed the Boston branch of the North American Union's Internal Recon and Security division. Although I had occupied this fiftieth-floor corner room for sixteen months, since my last promotion, it still felt alien to me. All those years operating my own private investigating firm out of increasingly cheaper quarters had left me unused to luxuries such as Organogenesis self-cleaning carpets and Zeneca squirmonomic chairs. Not to mention the steady posting to my eft-account.
But I had had to get out of the PI biz after the job I had done for Geneva Hippenstiel-Imhausen. That had been my last case before my crackup.
While booting her husband, I had lost my sidekick, a useless low-end splice named Hamster. If you had asked me prior to the murder of the cut-rate transgenic what the little shag meant to me, I would have said zepto-nothing. But there was a lot I hadn't known about myself back then, and my fatherly affection for the splice had been one such secret.
I had purchased Hamster right after my wife left me and apparently had transferred a lot of unresolved feelings to it.