"Connie Willis - Fire Watch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

"Tourist. Wanted to know where the Windmill Theater is. Read in the paper the girls are starkers
I know I looked as if I didn't believe him because he said, "You look rotten, old man. Not ge
enough sleep, are you? I'll get somebody to take the first watch for you tonight."
"No," I said coldly. "I'll stand my own watch. I like being on the roofs," and added silently, w
I can watch you.
He shrugged and said, "I suppose it's better than being down in the crypt. At least on the r
you can hear the one that gets you."
 October 10 -I thought the double watches might be good for me, take my mind off my inabili
retrieve. The watched pot idea. Actually, it sometimes works. A few hours of thinking a
something else, or a good night's sleep, and the fact pops forward without any prompting, wi
any artificials.
The good night's sleep is out of the question. Not only do the chars talk constantly, but th
has moved into the crypt and sidles up to everyone, making siren noises and begging for kippe
am moving my cot out of the transept and over by Nelson before I go on watch. He may be pic
but he keeps his mouth shut.

October 11 -I dreamed Trafalgar, ships' guns and smoe and falling plaster and Langby sho
my name. My fist waking thought was that the folding chairs had gone off. I could not see for a
smoke.
"I'm coming," I said, limping toward Langby and pulling on my boots. There was a hea
plaster and tangled folding chairs in the transept. Langby was digging in it. "Bartholo-mew!
shouted, flinging a chunk of plaster aside. "Bartho-lomew!"
I still had the idea it was smoke. I ran back for the stirrup pump and then knelt beside him
began pulling on a splin-tered chair back. It resisted, and it came to me suddenly, there is a
under here. I will reach for a piece of the ceiling and find it is a hand. I leaned back on my h
determined not to be sick, then went at the pile again.
Langby was going far too fast, jabbing with a chair leg. I grabbed his hand to stop him, an
struggled against me as if I were a piece of rubble to be thrown aside. He picked up a large
square of plaster, and under it was the floor. I turned and looked behind me. Both chars huddl
the recess by the altar. "Who are you looking for?" I said, keeping hold of Langby's arm.
"Bartholomew," he said and swept the rubble aside, his hands bleeding through the coatin
smoky dust.
"I'm here," I said. "I'm all right." I choked on the white dust. "I moved my cot out o
transept."
He turned sharply to the chars and then said quite calmly, "What's under here?"
"Only the gas ring," one of them said timidly from the shadowed recess, "and Mrs. Galbra
pocketbook." He dug through the mess until he had found them both. The gas ring was leaking
merry rate, though the flame had gone out.
"You've saved St. Paul's and me after all," I said, standing there in my underwear and b
holding the useless stirrup pump. "We might all have been asphyxiated."
He stood up. "I shouldn't have saved you," he said.
Stage one: shock, stupefaction, unawareness of injuries, words may not make sense exce
victim. He would not know his hand was bleeding yet. He would not remember what he had said
had said he shouldn't have saved my life.
"I shouldn't have saved you," he repeated. "I have my duty to think of."
"You're bleeding," I said sharply. "You'd better lie down." I sounded just like Langby in
Gallery.

October 13 -It was a high explosive bomb. It blew a hole in the choir roof; and some o
marble statuary is broken; but the ceiling of the crypt did not collapse, which is what I thoug