"Charles L. Grant - Glow of Candles, Unicorn's eye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

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Gordon was alone and friendless ....
Well, not really, but at the time there wasn't much that I wanted more. I tried to be
careful, however, not to disrupt the taping session by allowing my reinforced skepticism and
growing discomfort to put lines in my face where character should be, and where, I prayed
constantly, it would stay before the bottom dropped out of this market, too, and I had to return
to so-called regular employment to build up my account. To cover myself then, I placed right palm
to right cheek in what I had been taught was an overt display of not-quite-hopeless despair
coupled subtly with the proper degree of Shakespearean melancholy, Then, working at not flinching,
I lowered my buttocks onto the conveniently flat rock behind me and stared at the river. They
called it a river. Actually, it was something less than two hundred meters of recycled water not
nearly deep enough to drown a gnat .


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. . . . his weary but undaunted brain struggling mightily for the miraculous wherewithal
to extricate him from his precarious dilemma ....
The subvocal narration buzzing in my left ear so I could follow the cues raised in me
first a gagging sensation, then an impulse to swat at a nonexistent fly. I managed to swallow
several times without its showing, then shifted my palm to my chin and supported it by resting my
elbow on one knee. I could have brought it off. But my concentration slipped. The fact that I was
naked, cold, and resignedly anticipating a drenching from the slate-gray clouds massing
efficiently overhead goaded me into a mistake. After five minutes of gazing I could not help but
frown instead of assuming the attitude of intense problem-solving on the subconscious level. And
when it was done, there was no taking it back. . . and I knew it without anyone's prompting.
Unfortunately, no one bothered to turn off the tiger.
I heard it, a grumbling that should have come from the clouds. I rose quickly as it
stalked into view, a creature so magnificent in the terror that it instilled that I could not take
my eyes from its pelt, its face, the waterlike rippling of its muscles at shoulder and haunch.
A dark-feathered bird swept in front of it, but its gaze did not leave me for even the
length of a blink.
Slowly, I backed toward the river, crouched, my fingers hooked into pitiful imitations of
claws. Eveiything inside me from heart to stomach had suddenly become weightless and was floating
toward my throat, and I felt a curious giddiness that split the air into fluttering dark spots
before coalescing into stripes, massive paws, and disdainful curled lips exposing sharp white
death.
It should have leaped when it reached the boulder I had been sitting on. And it did. And
despite the training, the quiet talks, the assurances of my continuing good health . . . despite
it all, I screamed.
The tiger struck me full on the chest, its front paws grabbing for a hold, its rear claws
reaching to disembowel. I fell as I used the creature's momentum to spin us around, dropping off
the edge of the low bank and into the water. There were three rows of fire across my ribs, six
more on my shoulder blades, but I held the tiger under, a minute, more, until at last it quieted
and I thrust it away from me and staggered back to land. The entire sequence could not have lasted
more than three minutes from start to finish, but I felt as though a dozen years had been suddenly
added to my life. What there was of it.