"Michael F. Flynn - Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flynn Michael)

Dawn, Sunset and the Colours of the Earth
by Michael F. Flynn


A native and resident of Easton, Pennsylvania, and the grandfather of тАЬthree incredibly cute and
talented children,тАЭ Michael Flynn makes his living as a management consultant in statistical
methods and quality management. He is the author of the Firestar series and, most recently, the
critically well-received novel, The Wreck of the River of Stars. His short fiction has appeared in
Analog, AsimovтАЩs, F&SF, and elsewhere. Mike has been a Hugo nominee four times and won the
Sturgeon prize for his AsimovтАЩs story, тАЬHouse of DreamsтАЭ (October/ November 1997). His next
novel, Eifelheim, will be released from Tor in October. In his first story for us in nine years, Mike
masterfully explores the after effects of a disaster that seems to swallow up the . . .
At six-thirty of an early fall morning, when the sun was just lighting the evergreens and new
snow glistened atop Ranier, Motor Vessel Hyak left Pier 52 in Seattle, bound for Bremerton.
A Washington State Ferry of the Super Class, longer than a football field, she grossed 2700
tons dead weight and drew eighteen and a half feet. She cast off with nearly a thousand souls
aboard and motored into a fog in the center of Elliott Bay.
None of them were ever seen again.
Chino Mendez
People say at first what business has a poor fisherman to speak of Jesus? I have no
education, no clever words. I have nothing but the high school and many years of chasing the
tuna. But then I thought: what better thing for a preacher than to start as a fisherman? There is
precedent, no?
I will give my witness as I saw it, so you may believe with me.

Understand that I was a sinner before. This is important. I drank and I gambled and I had
women. Oh, yes. Perhaps you do not think so to look at me, but women find me attractive. I
have cut men in fights. Perhaps I killed a man in Miami, but this I do not know for sure.

I tell you this because you must understand what I was, so that you may understand what I
am, and so understand what I say. If one as lost as me can be found, there is hope for all.

I was christened Ipolito, but my friends have always called me Chino, because of my eyes.
Oh, yes, there were many Chinese brought to Cooba years ago and their blood runs in me. I
have been a fisherman all my life, even before I fled Cooba. I fished the Gulf, and then the
Keys, and then I came here to these strange, cold waters. Capitan Norris give me a place
on his Esmeralda and he teach me the waters of the Sound and there were many very hard
years, but never did I complain. Well, perhaps a little.

That morning we cast off and took our bearing on Duwamish Head. The dawn was behind us
and the air shimmer like the rainbow. The horizon glowed red; the sky above me, blue; and
all the colors ranged between. Oh, the salt tang of the sea! Oh, the cries of the gulls! They
swoop in a great circle around the bay. Around and around. I look back now and I see how
clear were all my senses that day.

We hear the horn of the ferry as she left the pier and for a time our paths run side by side, the
great ferry and the humble fishing boat, but the capitan saw a fog is risen in the bay, so he
turn the wheel a little to avoid it. The ferry, yes, had the radar and the global positioning, and
so she sailed into the fog, her horn booming. I hear the churn of her engines as she pass us,
and I see the people who lined the railing. Some were reading of the newspapers. Some