"Jerry Oltion - The Miracle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oltion Jerry)

"Thousands," Dr. Richards said with a grin. "Volcanos are relatively young,
geologically speaking. But even so, that's a fair question, and the only answer
I can give would have to be pure speculation, at least until we investigate
further. What I expect happened, though, was that the minor earthquake we had a
few days ago rearranged things inside the hill. Greg's footsteps as he jogged up
the trail set up a resonant vibration that started the display, as did the
footsteps of all the people coming and going later on. That would explain why it
became so much stronger when the crowd became more, ah, agitated."

A different reporter, a man wearing a powder-blue suit, Greg noticed, asked,
"Don't you think that explaining it in such cold, hard terms destroys the beauty
of it? If what you say is true and it is just a pizza-whatever effect, that
ruins the mystery of it for all those thousands of people who gained spiritual
enlightenment from it, don't you think?"

"Wait a minute," Dr. Richards said. "You're saying people can gain enlightenment
from ignorance. Are you sure you want to go on record saying that? You'd rather
have people worshipping a static spark than understanding what caused it?"

"That's not what I--" the reporter said, but the laughter from everyone else
drowned him out.

"The beauty lies in understandings" Dr. Richards said when the room quieted
down. He wiggled the crank on the vise a few more times, and tiny sparks shot
out of the wire.

That became the sound bite on the evening news all over the country. It made Dr.
Richards a celebrity for a few days, but then an airplane crashed into Dodgers'
Stadium and that put an end to his time in the spotlight. Locally the hill
stayed in the news a bit longer while the park service and various citizens'
groups argued over what to do with it, but then election season came along and
the press turned back to muckraking. Eventually the park service installed a
wooden barricade around the hilltop and warning signs along the trail, then
reopened it to the public. Fraternities took to holding parties on the hill at
night, drumming and dancing until the aurora lit the entire hilltop. A few
religious people and Flat-Earthers stubbornly came to worship the burning bush,
but they seldom stayed long.

Greg avoided the hill completely for months, but he never found another jogging
trail he liked as well, so one afternoon he finally decided to try Pilan Hill
again. It wasn't as bad as he'd expected. He had to dodge a few people on the
trail, but not so many that he had to break stride. And when he neared the top,
he caught himself straining to see if his footsteps had charged up the bush yet.
Experimentation had proven that only the top few hundred feet had any effect,
but the exact boundaries changed constantly with humidity and air pressure and a
dozen other variables.

A man stood before the barricade, holding a small child in his arms. The man had
evidently tired of stamping his feet. He smiled when he saw Greg coming, then he
turned with the child and pointed at the bush. "Watch," he said. "Watch the