"Jeff Long - Angels of Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Long Jeff)

hammers in a piton or wedges a nut into the rock, he customizes and expands his
own health insurance policy. The idea is that each piece of protection (or "pro" in the
abbreviated surfer-climber patois) is capable of catching your body weight times the
velocity of your fall. The size of the pro is less significant than the physics of its
placement, but since no one can see inside the crack, no one can state with certainty
what will or won't hold. Matters of faith. As John climbed the crack, he had attached
his leading rope to seven "fixed" pitons placed on sunnier days by earlier climbers.
Because he was in such a hurry, though, he'd neglected to back up the old pro with
some of his own setting. Now it was truth or consequences. The weathered old pins
were jerking loose from the crack like machine-gun slugs. Pop, pop, pop. It sounded
like breakfast cereal. Climbers call it a zipper fall for the way you unzip the pro.
Having nothing else to do as he unzipped, he counted the pops.

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Jeff Long - Angels of Light


He passed Tucker. He saw the moonlit teenager as an instant of mercy. Spare me,
thought John. Catch me, Tuck. Please. But not a sound passed his lips. It would have
done no good anyway. He felt the rope tighten at his waist and counted two more
pops. With each pop the rope relaxed again. Gone, he realized. Gone away. The wind
poured into his ears and he began to drown in the waves of his inner ocean. Panic
began to unpiece him. His graceful, unending breaststroke from here to nowhere
began to take on a frenzied, ridiculous tone, which set off a deeper alarm. Climbers
still talk about one of their own who erred near a summit and was heard to calmly
sigh "Shit" as he sailed past a lower ledge, trying to keep his balance. John was on the
verge of losing all balance. He'd lost control of the big picture; now he was losing
control of the little one, himself.
And then he heard the voice. It said nothing. Absolutely nothing. It calmed him. The
tempest in his ears suddenly abated. His clenched jaw relaxed. The shout in his soul
faded. Everything became acceptable.
Just as suddenly, he stopped with a long, dreamlike bounce. The rope stretched
elastically, snatching him away from the abyss, and then he was slammed pell-mell
into the wall, his shoulder and hip striking first. His lungs emptied with a frosty
whoof.
Tuck had caught his fall.
He felt pain, but it was a distant, unflowered sensation. John didn't care. Like a
supplicant, he reached both hands above his head and grasped the rope, gasping. He
touched his forehead to the rough Perlon line. "Padre nuestro," he started the chant,
then gave in to his adrenaline and simply sat there. Still clutching the rope, he
dangled above the inky forest floor. He raised his head to what stars were left. He
heard the abrupt, macho burp of a faraway frog. In a slow, noiseless spin, the world
began to accumulate around him again. The same moon was gleaming across the
same cold acres of vertical granite, illuminating his long, black hair and the sparse
whiskers on his wide jaw. It was like him to watch himself dangling there, tied to a
puppet string far too close to God.
At an even six feet he was barrel-chested, with legs that were longer than Apache but
slightly bandy all the same. He didn't have to wonder what his vagabond mother had
looked like; one glance down his hybrid body told all. Besides these long legs, she'd
carried narrow feet and small hands that looked too delicate on him. He was self-