"Walter Jon Williams - Surfacing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

Anthony saved the translation and got up from his seat. He went to the bridge and told the boat to
retrieve the drogue and head for Cabo Santa Pola at flank speed. He then went below and found a bottle
of bourbon that had three good swallows left.

The trailing microphones continued to record the sonorous moans from below, the sound now mingled

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Williams,%20Walter%20Jon%20-%20Surfacing%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (3 of 58)22-12-2006 12:11:31
 Surfacing

with the thrash of the boatтАЩs screws.

The screw danced on the deck as the engines built up speed. Its state of mind was not recorded.


The video news, displayed above the bar, showed the Kyklops making his tour of the planet. The
KyklopsтАЩ human body, male, was tall and blue-eyed and elegant. He made witty conversation and
showed off his naked chest as if he were proud of it. His name was Telamon.

His real body, Anthony knew, was a tenuous uncorporeal mass somewhere in n-dimensional space. The
human body had been grown for it to wear, to move like a puppet. The nth dimension was interesting
only to a mathematician: its inhabitants preferred wearing flesh.

Anthony asked the bartender to turn off the vid. The yacht club bar was called the Leviathan, and
Anthony hated the name. His creatures were too important, too much themselves, to be awarded a name
that stank of human myth, of human resonance that had nothing to do with the creatures themselves.
Anthony never called them Leviathans himself. They were Deep Dwellers.

There was a picture of a presumed Leviathan above the bar. Sometimes bits of matter were washed up
on shore, thin tenuous membranes, long tentacles, bits of phosphorescence, all encrusted with the local
equivalent of barnacles and infested with parasites. It was assumed the stuff had broken loose from the
larger Dweller, or were bits of one that had died. The artist had done his best and painted something that
looked like a whale covered with tentacles and seaweed.

The place had fake-nautical decor, nets, harpoons, flashing rods, and knick-knacks made from
driftwood, and the bar was regularly infected by tourists: that made it even worse. But the regular
bartender and the divemaster and the steward were real sailors, and that made the yacht club bearable,
gave him some company. His mail was delivered here as well.

Tonight the bartender was a substitute named Christopher: he was married to the ownerтАЩs daughter and
got his job that way. He was a fleshy, sullen man and no company.

We, thought Anthony, the world and I, are drinking alone. Anger burned in him, anger at the quality of
the day and the opacity of the Dwellers and the storm that beat brainlessly at the windows.

тАЬGot the bastard!тАЭ A man was pounding the bar. тАЬDrinks on me.тАЭ He was talking loudly, and he wore
gold rings on his fingers. Raindrops sparkled in his hair. He wore a flashing harness, just in case anyone
missed why he was here. Hatred settled in Anthony like poison in his belly.

тАЬGot a thirty-foot flasher,тАЭ the man said. He pounded the bar again. тАЬMe and Nick got it hung up