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

unicorn behind. But Yahweh had said two of each species, and He had said it several
times.
"You'd better go find a lady unicorn," I said to the unicorn.
He stared at me, his blue eyes sparkling with curiosity, his round nostrils
quivering. He sniffed the edge of the ark.
"Go already," I ordered. "Find a mate to bring on board with you."
Well, the dumb beast just poked some reeds with his horn and kept standing
around. In an effort to make him leave, I threw a flagon at him. He dodged it and
pranced around playfully, thinking this was a new game, though I was an old man
and had not played with him for several hundred years. I threw a few more things at
him and shouted a little. When he finally realized it wasn't a game, he moped and
looked hurt, letting his head hang down and his horn scratch the dirt. You could
make the unicorn happy, sad, or curious, but you could never make him do what
you wanted him to do.
Since he obviously wasn't going to find a mate himself, and since the flood was
getting closer every day, I decided to send my son Japheth out to find a lady
unicorn. No one had any idea where to look, and it seemed kind of hopeless, but he
tried anyhow. He's a good boy, if only he would get a haircut now and then.
Japheth searched in the west, since that's where the unicorn had come from. He
could only go so far, though, since Eden, if it even still existed, was forbidden to
men. And under the circumstances, he thought it best not to try Yahweh's patience.
By the time Japheth returned to us, his quest having proved unsuccessful, the
sky was darkening with thunderclouds such as no man has ever seen since. A wind
came up which tore saplings out of the ground by their very roots, knocked down
our simple shepherd's tents, and stripped the wool from our sheep as they clung
precariously to the rocky hills.
Despite all of this, I managed to get Yahweh's attention for a few minutes, for my
heart was heavy about the unicorn. We had failed to find his mate, but couldn't
Yahweh permit us to take him aboard anyhow? The Lord God didn't exactly answer
my prayer, He only repeated what He had been saying every day: there must be two
of each species, a male and a female, of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their
kind, of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and so on.
As the storm swelled above our heads, as the end of the world drew near, as the
sky thundered with Yahweh's rage, we loaded the ark. There were green alligators,
long-necked geese, ivory-toothed elephants, venomous serpents, furry-legged
spiders, slinking panthers, roes and hinds, monkeys and leopards, wolves and bears.
Every kind of creature came aboard the ark, save one -- the loveliest of all.
The unicorn pranced excitedly around the ark as we loaded it. Of all the beasts,
he was the only one who knew something monumentous was afoot, yet the others
lumbered aboard dumbly, guaranteed of Yahweh's protection, while the unicorn
vainly awaited his turn beneath the angry sky. In the end, perhaps realizing we meant
to leave him behind, he stopped prancing and merely watched, his pale eyes growing
opaque, his head lowering, his fur growing dull for the first time in a thousand years
as the fierce wind coated everything with sand and dust.
The rain started to fall just as we loaded the last of the food supplies into the ark.
My family all rushed on board and took their places, and I followed them. There was
a moment when, ignoring my wife's urgent plea to remain safely on board, I went
back for the unicorn. But as I made to help him aboard, the air around us filled with
the echoing crash of Yahweh's wrath, the sky opened up, and a bolt of lightening
scorched the earth around us.