"Connie Willis - Passage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

"I heard a noise," Mrs. Davenport said, "and then I was moving through this tunnel."

"Can you describe it?" Joanna asked, pushing the minitape recorder a little closer to her.

"The tunnel?" Mrs. Davenport said, looking around her hospital room, as if for inspiration. "Well,
it was dark..."

Joanna waited. Any question, even "How dark was it?" could be a leading one when it came to
interviewing people about their near-death experiences, and most people, when confronted with a
silence, would talk to fill it, and all the interviewer had to do was wait. Not, however, Mrs.
Davenport. She stared at her IV stand for a while, and then looked inquiringly at Joanna.

"Is there anything else you can remember about the tunnel?" Joanna asked.

"No..." Mrs. Davenport said after a minute. "It was dark."

"Dark," Joanna wrote down. She always took notes in case the tape ran out or something went
wrong with the recorder, and so she could note the subject's manner and intonation. "Closemouthed,"
she wrote. "Reluctant." But sometimes the reluctant ones turned out to be the best subjects if you just
had patience. "You said you heard a noise," Joanna said. "Can you describe it?"

"A noise?" Mrs. Davenport said vaguely.

If you just had the patience of Job, Joanna corrected. "You said," she repeated, consulting her
notes, " 'I heard a noise, and then I was moving through this tunnel.' Did you hear the noise before you
entered the tunnel?"

"No..." Mrs. Davenport said, frowning, "...yes. I'm not sure. It was a sort of ringing..." She
looked questioningly at Joanna. "Or maybe a buzzing?" Joanna kept her face carefully impassive. An
encouraging smile or a frown could be leading, too. "A buzzing, I think," Mrs. Davenport said after a
minute.

"Can you describe it?"

I should have had something to eat before I started this, Joanna thought. It was after twelve, and
she hadn't had anything for breakfast except coffee and a Pop-Tart. But she had wanted to get to
Mrs. Davenport before Maurice Mandrake did, and the longer the interval between the NDE and the
interview, the more confabulation there was.

"Describe it?" Mrs. Davenport said irritably. "A buzzing."
 It was no use. She was going to have to ask more specific questions, leading or not, or she
would never get anything out of her. "Was the buzzing steady or intermittent?"

"Intermittent?" Mrs. Davenport said, confused.

"Did it stop and start? Like someone buzzing to get into an apartment? Or was it a steady sound
like the buzzing of a bee?"

Mrs. Davenport stared at her IV stand some more. "A bee," she said finally.