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

a swimming pool, two fine restaurants (I recommend the Topside), and the strangest-looking staff
you'd ever want to see. Each of them -- and there were a hell of a lot of them -- was bald and
bearded; when we asked about it, Lazarus explained that they were members of a Pentecostal sect
that thought shaving their heads but not their faces brought them a bit closer to heaven.

September 20: We were still socked in with fog when I awoke, but I didn't feel like spending another
day doing nothing -- even a high-quality nothing such as the hotel offered -- so I told Lazarus to meet
me at 10:30 and we'd try to drive around a bit; Carol took one look out the window and told me that
she was staying inside. When we got two miles away from the Montclair the air became crystal clear,
and we realized that the mountains weren't covered by fog after all: what had happened was that a
cloud had come to rest exactly atop the Montclair. We drove back, got Carol, and spent the rest of
the day sightseeing in the mountains. We saw Cecil Rhodes' mountain home, and the Rhodes
Museum, and World's View, and a reconstruction of an ancient village, and one of the world's more
dangerous golf courses (hit the ball in the water and you get eaten by crocs; hit it in the trees and you
get eaten by leopards; overshoot the green and you fall 11,000 feet to your death). We ate lunch at
the Troutbeck Inn, then drove to some waterfalls where we had to climb part of a mountain and walk
out on a very precarious ledge to see them (Lazarus pointed the way, then locked himself in the car
and waited for us, convinced we would fall off the precipice), and finally returned to the hotel, which
was still surrounded by its very own cloud.

September 21: We left the Montclair and its cloud behind, and drove down the eastern side of the
country to Mutare, easily the prettiest African city we've seen. Once there we turned off and went to
La Rochelle, the magnificent estate of Lord and Lady Courtauld, who had willed it to Zimbabwe. It
contains fourteen acres of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen, with numerous little streams and
wooden bridges connecting the various sections. >From there we drove to a tiny colonial hotel, the
White Horse Inn, for lunch, then stopped by the Vumba Gardens, some 98 hectares worth of
meticulously-kept flowers and greenery. Then we headed south for Masvingo and the Great
Zimbabwe ruins, picking up a flat tire along the way; we drove the final 100 kilometers with no spare,
and got a second flat just as we were pulling into the Great Zimbabwe Hotel. While Carol and I slept
the sleep of the innocent, Lazarus earned his salary by hunting up some friends, finding an all-night
gas station (unheard-of in all other African countries), and getting the car in shape before breakfast.

September 22: Carol and I walked a mile from the hotel to Great Zimbabwe, the oldest and most
impressive ruins in all of sub-Saharan Africa, and the structure that gave Southern Rhodesia its new
name. This was a gold-trading society that existed about a millenium ago, and built a fortress with
walls some 40 feet high. I spent about two hours photographing it and taking notes, as it will figure
prominently in one of the books I'll be writing next year. Then, when I thought we were through,
Lazarus showed up and told us that there was an equally impressive ruin we hadn't seen yet. Where,
I asked. Up there, he said, pointing to a nearby mountain. So we spent another hour climbing up to
the second ruin, and once I caught my breath I had to admit he was right: it's every bit as impressive
as the one most people photograph (the so- called Great Enclosure), perhaps even moreso,
considering that every one of its million or so stones had to be carried up the mountain. We drove
back to Harare in the afternoon, checked into Meikles again (they weren't so sure about taking my
voucher this time, but eventually they relented), and we spent our final night in Zimbabwe pigging out
on a huge tray of food we ordered from room service.

September 23: We drove to the airport in early afternoon and caught a plane to Lilongwe, the new
capital of Malawi (formerly Nyasaland.) Upon arriving, we found the representative from Soche
Tours, which had subcontracted the Malawi portion of our safari. "You'd better hurry," she said.
"Your flight to Blantyre is about to leave." "We're not flying there," I said, showing her our itinerary