"David Gerrold - [SS] The Strange Disappearance of David Gerrold" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerrold David)

again, which is just fine for the mood IтАЩm in. While IтАЩm waiting for the grunge of Los
Angeles to clear itself out of my head, I follow roads IтАЩve never been on before.
That means getting off the freeway and taking that forgotten little turnoff that curves
suggestively away into the hills. Next thing I know, IтАЩm north of Palmdale, passing
through places I didnтАЩt believe were still possible in California. Look up Green
Valley, for instance.

Eventually, the road unwinds itself out onto Route 395, which should be
renamed Desolation Boulevard. Almost no traffic, no towns, and nothing on either
side except empty flatlands and the southernmost spine of the Sierras. I follow the
road until my blood sugar finally crashes. I pull off the highway onto what would
have been a dirt road if anybody had actually driven on it recently, crawl into the
back of the camper, roll an old blanket around myself and snore until dawn, when a
uniformed officer of the California State Highway Patrol bangs on the door and tells
me to stop scaring the cow. Singular. Maybe someday this place will be able to
afford a second one.

One half-cup of paint thinner sold from a coffee urn and a BLT later, found in
a place called Lone Pine, with no pine trees at all, but still big enough to attract a
location company from Desperate Pictures Inc., my blood sugar is rising again, and
less than an hour after that, IтАЩm wandering through the frightening emptiness of a
place called Manzanar. ThereтАЩs a guard tower, maybe a reconstruction, it looks too
new, and a museum, and a dirt road that winds around the places where barracks
used to be. I donтАЩt know why IтАЩm here, or why itтАЩs important to be here, but the
whole time, I can feel ghosts whispering in my ear. I just canтАЩt hear what theyтАЩre
saying. (And if I could, I wouldnтАЩt understand it. ItтАЩs in Japanese.)

I find where the music player has fallen off the dashboard and under the
passenger seat and plug it back in and let it play tracks at random, scrambling
Coltrane and Copland, Mozart and Morrison, and more than a few
surprisesтАФunremembered tracks from Ray Lynch and Deep Forest and the Penguin
Caf Orchestra. Then it finds Terry RileyтАЩs тАЬIn C,тАЭ and the battery dies somewhere
between the fifth and seventh chord change, leaving me hanging unfinished and
unresolved.

The timing is perfect.

I arrive at Mono LakeтАФa place so quiet and remote that you can hear your
own blood rushing through your veins. You can hear the blood rushing through the
veins of the person standing next to you.
 Mono Lake is a casualty of the relentless thirst of that big megalopolis I just
fled. Blame William Mulholland, they named a drive after him. The city diverted the
water from the tributaries that feed this high altitude sea, shrinking it to less than a
fourth of its former size, creating an ecological nightmare, and revealing a shoreline
of tortured and alien-looking mineral deposits. The surface of the water is so still,
itтАЩs a mirror of the distant mountains, deeply purple and capped with glistening
snow; the sky is so blue it aches. The mountains to the west are cold and white and
glistening, the sun paints the slopes with a blinding glare. Closer, the rocky minarets
of the mineral deposits float like airborne castles on the glassy skin of the lake.