"Katharine Kerr - Resurrection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

shakes it in the direction of the fleeing trolley. She cannot see clearly, but she thinks she noticed a long
sidelock of gray hair dangling at either side of a bushy gray beard, and a mass of gray hair sprouting from
under his hat. Since she spent nearly two years stationed in Israel, she can guess that he's one of the last
of the Orthodox, clinging to a way of dress already old-fashioned when his great-grandfather's generation
brought it to the Promised Land. But what, of course, is he doing here in San Francisco, home of all the
world's gentiles, refugees from a hundred countries, gathered over hundreds of years, where nothing
could be less pure, where the very land itself partakes of two mingled natures, water and earth blending
inexorably as the tides rise day by day and chew at the shore, and water and air mix into fog.
Somewhere, no doubt, he has found a place selling kosher food, or at least food that he can convince
himself to be pure enough to eat. She would shrug the problem away, remind herself that it's none of her
business, if his image would only unstick itself from her mind. Yet for a long time, as the bus lumbers
beside the sea-wall that once was Ocean Beach, she can see him in her memory, dressed in black and
yelling curses upon all things too impatient to wait for one old man, his thin arms waving, his hands curled
into fists.

Just at the end of the line, the bus breaks down. In mid-announcement the computer dies, the lights go
off, the rods fall with a thump and pronounced lack of sparks onto the roof. The other passengers sigh
and mutter remarks, thankful that they're transferring to another bus, rise and gather parcels, clatter off
behind the operator, who trots to the rear and begins working the wires again. Tiffany scrunches down
farther in her seat and watches the wires twitch and flutter outside the rear window as the operator raises
the connecting rods, makes contact, settles them onto the wires. Nothing happens. No hum, no lights, no
computerized voice apologizing for the interruption to service. A sudden flash of orange and green
uniform, the operator appears in the back doorway.

"Mights well get on off. Nother bus waiting just ahead anyhow."

"Okay. My transfer still good?"

"Oh yeah. No problem."

Tiffany goes out the back door and steps into the long cold sweep of shadow cast by the sea-wall. Out
across the Pacific the sun is dropping fast toward the horizon, but thanks to the forty-foot high reinforced
concrete wall that runs all the way down San Francisco's western border (continuing on south, as well, to
protect Daly City, Pacifica, Half-Moon Bay, those little towns long since swallowed up by Bay City
sprawl), no one will ever stand on Ocean Beach and watch it set again. The beach lies under ten feet of
water, anyway. Shivering a little she passes the other ex-passengers, walks up the line of buses, neatly
arranged in a half-moon of a turnaround, and finds the other Geary bus at the head of the line. Its door,
though, is shut, and its operator stands conferring with a little clot of Muni people back by the newly
dead bus. Termination incident. Soon a mechanic will arrive, and there will be a resurrection event.
Wiring. All in the wiring.

The sea-wall makes Tiffany nervous, it looms so high and cold, splattered with red graffiti, black
obscenities, green and purple tags from one gang or another. How they get up so high to scribble and
paint amazes her, as does their determination. As she studies the wall, she thinks she might see a couple
of cracks in it, down near the bottom where it counts. When she looks at the ground immediately below
the cracks, she finds depressions, as if the asphalt were just starting to sink, as if a rift were just starting
to develop. She steps to one side, squints: the depressions exist, all right, still shallow but an inexorable
sign that the sea is eating away at the base of the wall. No doubt it can be patched or propped to give
this boulevard and the public housing on its far side a stay of execution. For how long? She prefers not to
think of that.