"Kim Stanley Robinson - A Short, Sharp Shock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

A SHORT, SHARP SHOCK

Kim Stanley Robinson



1. The Night Beach



When he came to he was drowning. The water was black and he bobbed up in it swiftly, obscurely
aware that it was dangerous to do so, but he was helpless to stop; he tumbled over and swam
downward, arms loose and thrusting like tentacles, but it was useless. Air popped out of him in a stream
of white bubbles that flattened and shimmied as they squashed upward, all clustered around bearing him
to the surface. He glanced up, suddenly aware of the idea of surface; and there it was, an undulating
sheet of obsidian silk on which chips of raw silver skittered wildly back and forth. A flock of startled
birds turning all at onceтАФ noтАФit was, he thought as the world began to roar, the shattered image of a
crescent moon. At the thought a whole cosmology bloomed in himтАФ

And broke apart like the moon's image, as he crashed up into the air and gasped. He flailed at the water
whooping and kicking hard to stay afloat; he felt a wave lift him, and flopped around to face it. A cold
smack in the face and he tumbled again, thrashed through a somersault and came up breathing, barking
like a seal to suck in more air.

The next time under he rammed a sandbar and then he was rolling on a steep shorebreak, sluiced by
sandy water and struck repeatedly by small silver fish. He crawled up through rushing foam, mouth full of
salty grit, hands sinking wrist-deep in the wet sand. The little fish leaped in the phosphorescent foam,
banged into his arms and legs. The beach was bouncing with silver fish, it was like an infestation of
insects. On hands and knees he couldn't avoid squashing some into the sand.

At the high-water mark he collapsed. He looked across a gleaming black strand, filigreed with sea foam
receding on a wave. Coarse-grained sand sparked with reflected moonlight, and the fish arched to the
shape of the crescent moon, which hung over the horizon at the end of a mirrorflake path of water. Such
a dense, intricate, shifting texture of black and whiteтАФ

A large wave caught him, rolled him back down among the suffocating fish. He clawed the sand without
effect, then slammed into another body, warm and as naked as he was. The receding wave rushed down
to the triple ripple of the low-water mark, leaving them behind: he and a woman, a woman with
close-cropped hair. She appeared senseless and he tried to pull her up, but the next wave knocked them
down and rolled them like driftwood. He untangled himself from her and got to his knees, took her arms
and pulled her up the wet sand, shifting one knee at a time, the little silver fish bouncing all around them.
When he had gotten her a few body lengths into dry sand he fell beside her. He couldn't move.

From down the beach came shrill birdy cries. Children ran up to them shouting, buckets swinging at the
ends of their arms like great deformed hands. When they ran on he could not move his head to track
them. They returned to his field of vision, with taller people whose heads scraped the moon. The children
dashed up and down the strand on the lace edge of the waves. They dumped full buckets of wriggling
silver leaves in a pile beyond his head. Fire bloomed and driftwood was thrown on it, until transparent
gold ribbons leaped up into the night.