"Jack Dann - The Diamond Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

just bought the farm; Joel was shouting through the tube to tell me that
everything was okay -- when we were hit again.
I heard a ping as a bullet hit the motor, and an instant later I could
barely see through the oily smoke and fire. I gagged on the burnt exhalations
of fuel and oil that smeared over my goggles as the Moth went into a dive.
Reflexively, I took over the controls, which were linked to the front cockpit,
God bless Mr. Geoffrey de Havilland. I shouted back at Joel through the tube
and pulled as hard as I could on the stick while working the rudder and
aileron pedals. The compass was going all wacky, as though someone was playing
over it with a magnet, pulling the needle this way and that. Although I
couldn't see Joel, I _knew_ that he had been hit. Another wave of heat swept
over me and I figured I'd be lucky to have another few seconds before the fuel
tank blew Joel and me right out of the postcard pink and purple sky.
I'd always wondered what I'd be thinking about in my last moments. I'd
wondered about it every time I climbed into a Spad during Bloody April of
1917; I could fly as well as most anybody, although I was no Rickenbacker. I
had figured I was going to get it in '17 or '18, but I never even took a
bullet, not a scratch -- I had the proverbial angel on my wing -- and now here
I was, about to get it in 1923, which was _supposed_ to be the best year of my
life. I remembered Dr. Coue's prayer, which everyone was saying: "Day by day
in every way I am getting better and better."
Better and better.
"Joel," I shouted through the tube, "you're going to be okay. We're
going to be okay." _Day by day in every fucking way_, and I felt that hot,
sweaty tightness all over my face like I always do when I'm going to cry, but
I slipped out of that because the old girl was making a whining keening sort
of a noise, and then the motor sputtered and everything became summer
afternoon quiet, except for the snapping of the wing wires --
And I found myself counting, counting slowly and the ground spun
through the smoke, and I kept the nose up as the valley floor rose like an
elevator the size of Manhattan, and I wasn't thinking about anything, not
about dying or the tank exploding or the smoke or the smell of the oil -- or
my Mother, or Lisa, whom I had only dated twice, but she had gone down on the
first date and said she loved me, and she had so many freckles, and three
curly black hairs between her breasts, I remembered those three black hairs as
I counted and by one-hundred-and-forty-seven I expected the giant hand of God
to slap me right into the canyon floor and the fuel tank to explode like the
sun and --
****
It was dark when they found me, but the moon was so big and bloated
that everything looked like it was coated with silvery dust, except the
shadows, where the moon dust couldn't settle. I don't know whether they woke
me or whether it was the drip from the fuel tank, but once I realized I was
alive and that this was certainly not heaven, I felt most every part of my
body begin to ache. I moved my legs to make sure I still had them, and I tried
to swat at the Negroes who were pulling me out of the cockpit. I don't know
what was in my head because they were big men, and I was just swatting away,
but they didn't throw me about or mistreat me or ask me any questions; it was
as if they were just handling a fragile piece of merchandise, nothing that was
alive, just merchandise. I started coughing as soon as they moved me, and I