"Reed, Robert - OurPrayers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

"Unless?" the reporter interrupts.

Did I say unless? he seems to think. He pauses, collecting himself, then tells
the world, "A strong wind could be dangerous. If it was big enough, and if it
blew from the northwest for a long time...it could start to erode the dam...I
suppose..."

"You aren't sure?"

"It's unlikely," says the spokesman, suddenly confident. "It would have to blow
at just the right angle...the wrong angle, I mean --"

"How unlikely is unlikely?"

"I wouldn't know how to calculate such a tiny number." The tired, possibly
drunken face seems unable to calculate anything just now. "Really, I don't think
there's much else I can tell you."

That concludes the interview, and the reporter says, "Well, our prayers are with
you."

Meaning what? I ask myself.

We hope the rains stop? Or is he saying We hope you don't look like an idiot in
the morning?

I remember one night -- a sleepless thundering Weather Channel night --when I
watched one of the multitude of documentaries produced in the last months. Why
is weather so difficult to forecast? One grinning meteorologist spoke of chaos
and butterflies. No, not butterflies. Butterfly effects, wasn't it? He told me
how tiny, tiny events can precipitate into weather fronts and typhoons. Or have
no effect, for that matter. No amount of calculating power can predict which
tiny events will have what impact. And to illustrate, the grinning man waved his
hand in the air, saying, "For all I know, this is making a disturbance that will
circle the globe and flatten Tulsa with a tornado. Though it probably won't.
Almost certainly won't." A shrug of his shoulders. Doing what kinds of harm?
"Minuscule events can lead to massive consequences. That much we do know." A
flash of teeth. "Isn't that interesting to consider?"

Moments after the interview ends, as if with some cosmic signal, we hear the
wind begin to rise. To strengthen.

It flows sideways over our shack, making the walls and roof creak and shift. Its
direction is obvious. Ominous. And not too much later, every network interrupts
its late-night programming to bring news from the reservoir. Camera crews are
sprinkled along the dam's crest. Already the waves are striking at the
rock-faced shoreline, each larger than the one before it, foam and compressed
air clawing at the rocks, then reaching higher, finding softer materials already
weakened by months of pressure and angry water.