"Fritz Leiber - Our Lady of Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

turned back to the window.
It was the TV tower standing way out there so modern-tall on Sutro Crest, its three long
legs still deep in fog, that had first gotten him hooked on reality again after his long escape
in drunken dream. At the beginning the tower had seemed unbelievably cheap and garish to
him, an intrusion worse than the high rises in what had been the most romantic of cities, an
obscene embodiment of the blatant world of sales and advertisingтАФeven, with its great red
and white limbs against blue sky (as now, above the fog), an emblazonment of the American
flag in its worst aspects: barberpole stripes; fat, flashy, regimented stars. But then it had
begun to impress him against his will with its winking red lights at nightтАФso many of them!
he had counted nineteen: thirteen steadies and six winkersтАФand then it had subtly led his
interest to the other distances in the cityscape and also in the real stars so far beyond, and
on lucky nights the moon, until he had got passionately interested in all real things again, no
matter what. And the process had never stopped; it still kept on. Until Saul had said to him,
only the other day, "I don't know about welcoming in every new reality. You could run into a
bad customer."
"That's fine talk, coming from a nurse in a psychiatric ward," Gunnar had said, while
Franz had responded instantly, "Taken for granted. Concentration camps. Germs of
plague."
"I don't mean things like those exactly," Saul had said. "I guess I mean the sort of things
some of my guys run into at the hospital."
"But those would be hallucinations, projections, archetypes, and so on, wouldn't they?"
Franz had observed, a little wonderingly. "Parts of inner reality, of course."
"Sometimes I'm not so sure," Saul had said slowly. "Who's going to know what's what if
a crazy says he's just seen a ghost? Inner or outer reality? Who's to tell then? What do you
say, Gunnar, when one of your computers starts giving readouts it shouldn't?"
"That it's got overheated," Gun had answered with conviction. "Remember, my
computers are normal people to start out with, not weirdos and psychotics like your guys."
"NormalтАФwhat's that?" Saul had countered.
Franz had smiled at his two friends who occupied two apartments on the floor between
his and Cal's. Cal had smiled, too, though not so much.
Now he looked out the window again. Just outside it, the six-story drop went down past
Cal's windowтАФa narrow shaft between this building and the next, the flat roof of which was
about level with his floor. Just beyond that, framing his view to either side, were the
bone-white, rain-stained back wallsтАФmostly windowlessтАФof two high rises that went up and
up.
 It was a rather narrow slot between them, but through it he could see all of reality he
needed to keep in touch. And if he wanted more he could always go up two stories to the
roof, which he often did these days and nights.
From this building low on Nob Hill the sea of roofs went down and down, then up and up
again, tinying with distance, to the bank of fog now masking the dark green slope of Sutro
Crest and the bottom of the tripod TV tower. But in the middle distance a shape like a
crouching beast, pale brown in the morning sunlight, rose from the sea of roofs. The map
called it just Corona Heights. It had been teasing Franz's curiosity for several weeks. Now
he focused his small seven-power Nikon binoculars on its bare earth slopes and humped
spine, which stood out sharply against the white fog. He wondered why it hadn't been built
up. Big cities certainly had some strange intrusions in them. This one was like a raw
remnant of upthrust from the earthquake of 1906, he told himself, smiling at the unscientific
fancy. Could it be called Corona Heights from the crown of irregularly clumped big rocks on
its top, he asked himself, as he rotated the knurled knob a little more, and they came out
momentarily sharp and clear against the fog.