"Jerry Davis - Scuba (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davis Jerry)

the acid in the air. Jack stared at the rain, but in his mind he
was seeing Cameron Reef at 85 fathoms, the deepest dive he'd ever
made. At 85 fathoms the ocean was black, the water cold and murky
with plankton and dead matter that drifted down from the surface
to the cold, motionless bottom. The bottom was gray, soft mud
lumped together in shapes from the subconscious mind --- it looked
like the place your soul goes to when it dies, the soul resting
like a lump of mud next to the other lumps of mud, dead,
featureless, undisturbed for millennia.
It was during that dive that Jack had an attack of nitrogen
narcosis, almost killing him. He hadn't gone diving since. He had
fully intended on going back down --- nothing in his mind was
telling him to give up diving --- but this was when his father
sold the company due to illness and had sent for Jack to help. Now
he was here in Chicago, trapped, instead of going back and
challenging the reef. Jack sipped his coffee, staring out the
window. He preferred the reef, narcosis and all; narcosis was, at
least, an enemy that could be anticipated.

#

Jack's boss, Neil Cromwell, was a giant in his own mind. When
he closed his eyes and pictured himself he saw this enormous,
inflated figure, like a parade float, sitting in a giant chair at
a fifty-foot desk while everyone else in his sight went about
their jobs at his feet. They were tiny, fragile little people who
all scurried about carrying out his will.
When Neil pictured Jack Buchman in his mind, he saw an
anomaly, a misshapen cancerous figure that didn't belong, bigger
than the others but still dwarfed by himself, a flaw in the
perfection of his world. Jack knocked on Neil's door and let
himself into Neil's office, and Neil stared at him the same way
he'd stare at the one last remaining piece of a puzzle that would
not fit into its hole. "You're fifteen minutes late," he snapped
at Jack.
"I'm sorry." Jack looked pre-occupied. He looked sick, there
was no color in his face.
"You know, Jack, you're just not cut out for this job.
There's no reason in the world that you have to stick with it."
"I have a contract that says I have to stick with it."
Neil sighed. "I'm more than willing to let you out of the
contract."
"I thought I came here to get my ass chewed about a phone
bill."
"You're here to get your ass chewed for being a fool. You're


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