"Marc Laidlaw - The Black Bus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laidlaw Marc)

Bodies like an ocean, like a breaking wave of souls caught in mid-curl, rushed
away beneath him to fill the vast pool of the theater, curving up and around, reaching
to the sky on all sides, energized by the pulsing light. All of them dancing, swaying,
caught in the trance of the music. From down here the clouds looked like a vaporous
cover thrown over the theater. Looking up made him dizzy, his vision lined with a
funnel of possessed faces staring down at himтАФ past him, really, toward the stage.
He shuddered and followed their eyes with his own, knowing that was where he
could always find his charges.

The Group was so much smaller than its music. Tiny figures, although of
jewel-like clarity even in the smoky distances of the theater, they bent above their
instruments, hardly moving anything but arms and fingers. He had seen them often
enough to know their eyes were closed, their mouths fixed in grave and urgent
expressions. So they would remain until some shrieking inspiration bore its way
through them, when their heads went back and their eyes bulged and words spirited
from their throats in desperate harmonies. тАФ But that was always later. This early
on, the concert was a voyage in its infancy, almost plodding still. It was perhaps the
only time he would be able to find his riders. Earlier, the place would have been a
riot of people vying for position; later it would be a frenzy. Things were relatively
subdued.

He found a stairway leading down into the sunken center of the arena; it was
covered in bodies, worshipers who hardly acknowledged his presence, barely
allowed him to pass. They resented his worming passage, thinking that he sought to
put himself closer to the source of the music. If they had known how little he wished
this, they would have laughed in disbelief. Often he was forced to halt and wait for a
new path to open; and then he would feel himself trapped with the music, suffocating
in it. People all around him, eyes rolled back, heads whipping from side to side, and
himself deaf to it. Afraid they might recognize that he was not one of them.

Finally he pulled himself free of strangers, seeing faces he recognized just
ahead, mere yards from the elevated heights of the stage. They were together there,
packed close as if for protection, the eternal pilgrims. No doubt there were other
such clusters scattered through the theater, but these were his own. Driver had
grown fond of them, if not their music. The object of their devotions тАФ the Group
тАФ meant nothing more to him than a steady job, travel, food, companionship. He
could as easily have been driving a limousine or a schoolbus, or delivering parcels
door to door тАФ in which case, he would never have experienced the strangeness of
such nights. The awareness of how close he had come to missing this particular life
lessened his dread of the crowd. He felt almost at home here, through familiarity.
 As he pushed his way toward SonoraтАФ her blond hair streaming back, metal
rivets threaded through the strands, long strips of gleaming tattooed scalp showing
above the wildly colored scarves she wore тАФ a fearful face thrust toward him. A
skinny young man, bearded and pale, his hair tom into tatters, his eyes wide with
horror. Screaming not with the music, which might have been appropriate later in the
night, but in time to some sinister rhythm of his own making.

He collided with Driver, who would have fallen if not for the congestion of
bodies holding him upright. тАЬItтАЩs happening again!тАЭ he howled, staring desperately