"Howard Waldrop - Occam's Ducks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

OccamтАЩs ducks
by Howard Waldrop

Producers Releasing Corporation Executive: Bill, youтАЩre 45 minutes behind on your
shooting schedule. Beaduine: You mean, someoneтАЩs waiting to see this crap??
-- William тАЬOne ShotтАЭ Beaduine
For a week, late in the year 1919, some of the most famous people in the
world seem to have dropped off its surface.
The Griffith company, filming the motion picture The Idol Dancer, with the
palm trees and beaches of Florida standing in for the South Seas, took a shooting
break.
The mayor of Fort Lauderdale invited them for a 12-hour cruise aboard his
yacht, the Grey Duck. They sailed out of harbor on a beautiful November morning.
Just after noon a late-season hurricane slammed our of the Carribean.
There was no word of the movie people, the mayor, his yacht, or the crew for
five days. The Coast Guard and the Navy sent out every available ship. Two
seaplanes flew over the shipping lanes as the storm abated.
Richard Barthelmess came down to Florida at first news of the disappearance,
while the hurricane still raged. He went out with crew of the Great War U-boat
chaser, the Berry Islands. The seas were so rough the captain ordered them back in
after six hours.
The days stretched on; three, four. The Hearst newspapers put out extras,
speculating on the fate of Griffith, Gish, the other actors, the mayor The weather
cleared and calm returned. There were no sightings of debris or oil slicks. Reporters
did stories on the Marie Celeste mystery. Hearst himself called in spiritualists in an
attempt to contact the presumed dead director and stars.
On the morning of the sixth day, the happy yachting party sailed back in to
harbor.
First there were sighs of relief.
Then the reception soured. Someone in Hollywood pointed out that GriffithтАЩs
next picture, to be released nationwide in three weeks, was called The Greatest
Question, and was about life after death, and the attempts of mediums to contact the
dead.
W. R. Hearst was not amused, and he told the editors of his papers not to be
amused, either.
Griffith shrugged his shoulders for the newsmen. тАЬA storm came up. The
captain put in at the nearest island. We rode out the cyclone. We had plenty to eat
and drink, and when it was over, we came back.тАЭ
The island was called Whale Cay. They had been buffeted by the heavy seas
and torrential rains the first day and night, but made do by lantern light and electric
torches, and the dancing fire of the lightning in the bay around them. They slept
stacked like cordwood in the crowded belowdecks.
They had breakfasted in the sunny eye of the hurricane late next morning up
on deck. Many of the movie people had had strange dreams, which they related as
the far-wall clouds of the back half of the hurricane moved lazily toward them.
Neil Hamilton, the matinee idol who had posed for paintings on the cover of
the Saturday Evening Post during the Great War, told his dream. He was in a long
valley with high cliffs surrounding him. On every side, as far as he could see, the
ground, the arroyos were covered with the bones and tusks of elephants. Their
cyclopean skulls were tumbled at all angles. There were millions and millions of