"Gardner Dozois - Strangers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

light-and-shadow games with their gleaming skin and the flashing motion
of their limbs. Others were dressed in fantastic costumes, towering,
nodding plumes, brilliant jewels and feathers, grotesque swollen-headed
masks. Gods and demons danced on the beach, and their reflections
danced with them across the glossy sand. Platforms had been built out
into the ocean, only an inch above the surface, and the glittering creatures
danced there too, half-awash, sometimes leaping into the air to tumble
and jack-knife down into the water. They sported and plunged there like
solemnly drunken porpoises, as at home in the sea as on the land. The
dancers were sure-footed, lithe, incredibly agile. They spun, pranced,
stood vibrantly motionless for a long moment, twisted, somersaulted,
leaped high into the air. They had been going on like this for hours, since
sunset, and they would continue without pause until sunrise. Farber
watched them for a long time. Only afterward, away from the beach,
would he be able to estimate that at least three hours must have passed.
Now, there was no time, no duration. Occasionally the crowd of onlookers
around him would sigh or moan all at once, a vast articulate Ahhh going
up to the coldly watching stars, sinking back under the chant, then welling
irresistibly up again. Ahhh. As with their swaying motion, it was not a
deliberate thing, a planned response as in a Terran religious ceremony.
Rather it was a reaction, a muted, reluctant sound of awe, pulled from
themтАФalmost against their willтАФby the power of the Al├аntene. Farber did
it too, his lips opening as though yanked by fishhooks, the sound coming
jagged and low from his throat, Ahhh, Ahhh. And as he watched them, it
seemed as if everything was knitted togetherтАФthe motion of the dancers,
the singing, the snapping flame-banners of the torches, the ecstatically
pained crying of the instruments, the reflections in wet sand, the heat and
sweat of the bodies around himтАФand the universe was crimped, a corner
of the World folded over, and earth and sky and water became one,
indistinguishable.
And Farber pulled away, frightened. He pushed his way up from the
beach, shoving and scrambling, until the sound of the ceremony was less
overwhelming and some of his panic died. He had taken it too far, come
too close to something alien, too near to intuitively grasping a thing he
was not equipped to understand. He was shaken, dizzy with incense and
torchlight and strangeness, and his legs were like jelly under him. Slowly,
he staggered up the beach toward Ocean House. The Al├аntene had spoken
to something wild and sad and desperate in his blood, conjured up
longings that he could neither name nor satisfy. There was a ghost-horde
of chaotic, unidentifiable emotion in his skull now, peripheral, mocking,
insistent. Their voices had faded somewhat by the time he reached the
portico of Ocean House, but he was still dazed and unsteady, and more
helplessly bewildered than ever. A group of Earthmen were standing out in
front of the building, holding native drinks and atomizers, watching the
ceremony down on the beach with amused tolerance, as if it was a
fireworks display. Farber avoided them, and went inside.
It was an enormous, L-shaped building, situated just to the north of the
Aome's juncture with Elder Sea. The side that faced south, overlooking the
Aome, was called River House; the side that faced east, to the sea, was
Ocean House. Both faces were glassed in floor to ceiling, so that they were