"Mike Resnick - Between the Sunlight and Thunder (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

Reserve; she did so, and reported that because of some foul- up we had been scheduled to arrive at
Mana Pools on August 16, not September 16, and that Chikwenya was sold out. We told her to tell
them we had paid vouchers and planned to show up anyway, and it was their job to find someplace
to put us. They reluctantly agreed, and Diana mentioned in passing that Sanyati had been unable to
reconfirm our arrival but since they had been paid in advance had simply set aside our cabin and
assumed we were coming. (I just love making travel arrangements in the Third World.) Since Sanyati
is a mountaintop surrounded on all sides by water, game drives and walks were out of the question,
and we selected from among a number of boats that Hans had. The seascape was positively
unearthly: tops of thousands of trees poked up out of the water, and because it was in the mid-
90s,
the evaporation caused a haze that obscured the horizon; certainly no alien world could appear
more
exotic than this, and I will find a way to appropriate it for one of my books. We went along the
coast
of the Matusadona National Park and saw thousands of animals drinking and walking along the
shoreline, then went back and climbed all those damned stairs again. I had just gotten to sleep
when
Wellington, the camp cat, decided he would enjoy mousing my toes, a processs that continued all
night; since my own cats, Nick and Nora, find endless fascination in keeping me awake, I felt
right at
home.

September 15: We took two rides in a pontoon: a morning ride into the Sanyati Gorge itself, an
afternoon ride to Matusadona, where we got within ten yards of five bull elephants who spent
almost
an hour bathing and frolicking in the water. Wellington felt deserted and bit harder than usual
during
the night.

September 16: We flew up to Mana Pools in the Zambezi Valley, where we were driven to
Chikwenya Camp and found out that two couples who were arriving by canoe had run up against a
hard current and would be two days late, which meant that we got our accomodation after all. This
was a bush camp to end all bush camps: elephants felt free to wander through it at all times of
the day
and night, and while we have frequently had small lizards in our tents (actually a beneficial
circumstance, since they eat insects), this was the first time we ever shared our quarters with a
snake.
(I don't know if he ate insects, but he certainy ate lizards.) Our hosts were Jeff and Veronica
Stutchbury. Jeff is quite famous in these parts, having been the very first game warden at the
South
Luangwa Valley National Park in Zambia, and has had numerous articles and photographs published
in wildlife journals. Their three sons also make a living from wildlife, one as a photographer,
one as a
painter, and one as a documentary filmmaker. Jeff was probably the most knowledgable guide we've
ever been out with; he was unquestionably the most eccentric. He found beauty in every living
thing,
knew the natural history of everything we saw, and had the attention span of a 9-week-old puppy.
Some game runs never got more than 500 yards from camp, as Jeff would find an exotic tree and
explain its workings for hours; others would take us far afield and run for four or five hours,
driving