"Foster, Alan Dean - He" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

Elaine started tugging at her own tanks. It unfroze him. He grabbed her arms, held them at her side until she finally nodded slowly, calmed.
It took every ounce of courage he possessed to look outside that cranny. He blinked, drifted out further. He had disappeared. Poplar glanced in all directions. Nothing.
He beckoned to Elaine. Carefully he made his intentions clear. Megalodon, being as stupid as any
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modern shark, had doubtlessly drifted off in search of prey that behaved like such and didn't melt into hard, unappetizing coral.
Poplar armed his shark stick ... a terribly futile-seeming gesture. Elaine did likewise. He had to try twice with his shaking hands before he got the shell armed. The monster was a good 30 meters long and must weigh more tons than Poplar cared to think about. The shark stick might tickle Him. But it was comforting to hold in the crook of one arm.
He pushed away first and they headed for the Vatai. Moving fast, they hugged the reef as tightly as they could. He let her get a little ahead, as arranged. That way they'd make less of a blur against the reef. The smaller shapes would be harder for the shark's eyesight to detect against the dark coral.
As they rose gradually toward the surface, leaving the protection of the reef wall, he tried to watch five directions at once. Inside he was oddly calm. What an animal! Nearly a hundred feet of sheer grace and power.
He missed a stroke. Hell, he'd forgotten to take a single picture! Not one lousy shot! AH he had by way of proof was the corroborative statement of Elaine -- worth nothing in such august publications as the Journal of Marine Biology -- and a couple of teeth that they'd treat as he first had. He would have cried, but it would have ruined his vision.
The curved bottom of the Vatai became visible just ahead and above, its anchor cable hardly moving in the calm sea. The platform occasionally broke the surface. He looked regretfully down at his camera.
An unmistakable shape, a slate-gray torpedo, was coming up fast behind them. This time it wasn't a lazy chase. The attack was as sharply defined as death. Sunlight flashed on teeth that could snap through steel plate.
They swam for their lives. Panic filled him, terror made jelly of his muscles. Only adrenalin pushed him through the clean glass water.
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They weren't going to make it. He wasn't a fish. He was the devil himself, Beelzebub, all the things that go bump in the night, the terrors of childhood and of little-boy darkness.
Elaine was falling behind. He slowed.
Goddammit, it was only a fish.
He turned and waited. Elaine paused only to give him a stricken look in passing and then was gone. Perfectly calm, he was. Relaxed and peaceful in the cool water. Inside, his one major concern was that no one would be able to record this for the Journal. Pity. Then there was no sea bottom, no reef, no sunlight. Only He and me, thought Poplar,
He kicked with every bit of energy in his legs, exploding to his right. He had a brief glimpse of an obscene eye as big as a saucer, a black gullet as deep as a well. It touched him. Consciousness departed as he jabbed with the shark stick.
He doubted, along with the best Biblical referents, that the sky in heaven was blue. But he wasn't going to argue. There was a constriction, a tightness in his throat, that wasn't caused by fear. Elaine was hugging him and crying. It felt like he'd swallowed a cork.
"For Christ's sake let me get some air!" he finally managed to croak. She backed off.
"Damn you, damn you. You scared the hell out of me, you insensitive, you . . . !" She sniffled. Her hair was wet and stringy and she was totally beautiful. "I ran away and left you." The crying broke out again in full force, and she fell onto his chest, sobbing.
"I'm sorry, I apologize for my inconsiderateness. Tell you what, I'll marry you. Will that make up for it?" He rolled over, felt the softness of the mat they'd slipped under him. Someone had removed bis tanks and mask.
She pulled away, stared at him in stunned silence. For some reason, this started her crying all over again. They'd removed his fins, too. He wiggled his toes.
Only one set moved.
He sat up slowly and looked down at himself. His
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right foot ended at the ankle in a swath of bandages and dried blood. His voice was so even it shocked him.
"What happened?" he asked the old Matai, who had been watching him carefully. He was aware the question lacked brilliance, but at the moment he didn't feel very witty.
"He did not take you, Sea-Doctor Poplar. Perhaps so close to the surface, the sun blinded it at the last moment. Perhaps He lost you against the bottom of the boat."
"You don't believe any of that," said Poplar accusingly. He searched for pain but there wasn't any. Someone had made use of the Vatat1^ medical kit.
"No, Dr. Poplar, not really. Tangaroa knows why."
Poplar thought of something, started laughing. Elaine looked at him in alarm, but he quickly reassured her.
"No. I'm still sane, I think, 'Laine. It just occurred to me that I can't go stalking around the office like Ahab himself, with only a lousy foot taken. What a cruddy break."
"Don't joke about it," she blubbered, then managed a weak smile. "It will ruin your rhythm at the wedding."
He laughed, too, then slammed a fist against the deck. "We're going back to Tutuila. I'm going to get a ship from the Navy base, somehow, and harpoons. We'll come back here and ..."
"Poplar," began Ha'apu quietly, "no one will believe you. Your Navy people will laugh at you and make jokes."
"Well, then I'll get the funds to hire a bigger ship, someway. One big enough to haul that thing back on. My God, one day I'll see it stuffed and mounted in the Smithsonian!"
"They'll have to build a special wing," Elaine grinned tightly.
"Yeah. And don't you go putting out any fishing
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lines on the way back, you hear? I don't want to lose you on the trip in."
"How about after we get back?" she replied, staring at him.
He looked at her evenly. "Not then, either. Not ever. Hey, you know something? I'm famished."
"You've been unconscious for five hours," she told him. "I'll fix you something." She rose, moved below decks.
"And now you are as I, Doctor, for you have gazed upon Him. He has changed you, and you are no longer yourself as before, and He has taken a piece of your soul."