"Laura Resnick - No Room for the Unicorn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Laura)

"This is how to make it, Noah," He said to me. "Make an ark of resinous wood,
then caulk it with pitch inside and out. The length of the ark is to be three hundred
cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits." Of course, He went into
more detail, but I'm an old man now and can't quite remember. I was an old man
even then, in fact -- six hundred years old, to be frank. So, I'm sure you can see
how all of this was a bit of a strain.
I had to send some of my family out after these pairs of animals, since not all of
them were cooperative. My wife was furious, because Yahweh had said we must
bring the unclean animals, as well as the clean. Believe me, given a choice in the
matter, I'd have left the rats and puff adders behind and taken the unicorn along. I
mean, how would you like to spend more than forty days in a boat with cobras,
hyenas, spiders, hippos, bullfrogs, jackals, vultures, and lions while the world is
coming to an end?
The unicorn appeared one day while I was working on the ark. He was a pretty
smart animal, and he obviously knew something big was afoot. He was beautiful,
too, despite that silly single horn sticking out of his forehead, the horn about which
my father had always made such obscene comments.
The unicorn was white, a pure, glistening, undefiled color, whiter than goat's
milk. He was big, though not as big as some have said, his back being about as high
as a man's shoulder. His pale hooves were slightly mottled, like mother-of-pearl or
fine marble from the north, and his eyes were as blue as the sky over Eden, the land
from which he had come with our forefathers. His mane was long and wavy, as
shiny and soft as a maiden's hair.
Speaking of maidens, I've heard a lot of strange stories about unicorns and
virgins. It's complete fabrication. Maidens had nothing to do with the unicorn, and
he reacted no differently to them than to the rest of us. There was, however, a
widow named Zipporah who... Well, it was a long time ago, so why stir it up again?
And as for grinding up the horn of the unicorn to make a potion which would
render men more potent -- even if such a thing had occurred to us, do you seriously
imagine the beast would have let us catch him and cut off his horn? As I've said, he
was not stupid.
I suppose he was so smart because he had lived so long. My grandfather
Methuselah told me that the unicorn had been around long before his own birth, and
when you consider that Methuselah was nine hundred years old when he told me
this, it's pretty impressive. The unicorn never aged, though. I figure he was more
than a thousand years old when the flood came, but he looked fit and muscular, his
coat shiny and sleek, his legs sturdy and strong, his eyes alert, his gate quick, his
movements agile. If I could have asked the unicorn one single question, it would
have been how he kept in such good shape. At six hundred, I was really starting to
show my age.
I suppose that if the unicorn could have asked me one question, it would have
been what was I doing building an ark in the middle of terra firma.
He was dying of curiosity, I could see that. He was usually very independent and
elusive, but once I started building the ark, he started hanging around all of the time.
Meanwhile, the animals began lining up two by two. Some were brought by my
children, others came on their own, apparently having been warned by Yahweh
about the catastrophe to come. He had created them after all, so there was no reason
He couldn't speak to them.
One day it finally occurred to me that I had never seen another unicorn. This
worried me, since it had never before dawned on me that I might have to leave the