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

"Was the buzzing loud or soft?"

"Loud," she said, but uncertainly. "It stopped."

I'm not going to be able to use any of this, Joanna thought. "What happened after it stopped?"

"It was dark," Mrs. Davenport said, "and then I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, andтАФ"

Joanna's pager began to beep. Wonderful, she thought, fumbling to switch it off. This is all I
need. She should have turned it off before she started, in spite of Mercy General's rule about keeping
it on at all times. The only people who ever paged her were Vielle and Mr. Mandrake, and it had
ruined more than one NDE interview.

"Do you have to go?" Mrs. Davenport asked.

"No. You saw a lightтАФ"

"If you have to go..."

"I don't," Joanna said firmly, sticking the pager back in her pocket without looking at it. "It's
nothing. You saw a light. Can you describe it?"

"It was golden," Mrs. Davenport said promptly. Too promptly. And she looked smugly pleased,
like a child who knows the answer.

"Golden," Joanna said.

"Yes, and brighter than any light I'd ever seen, but it didn't hurt my eyes. It was warm and
comforting, and as I looked into it I could see it was a being, an Angel of Light."

"An Angel of Light," Joanna said with a sinking feeling.

"Yes, and all around the angel were people I'd known who had died. My mother and my poor
dear father and my uncle Alvin. He was in the navy in World War II. He was killed at Guadalcanal,
and the Angel of Light saidтАФ"

"Before you went into the tunnel," Joanna interrupted, "did you have an out-of-body
experience?"
 "No," she said, just as promptly. "Mr. Mandrake said people sometimes do, but all I had was
the tunnel and the light."

Mr. Mandrake. Of course. She should have known. "He interviewed me last night," Mrs.
Davenport said. "Do you know him?"

Oh, yes, Joanna thought.

"He's a famous author," Mrs. Davenport said. "He wrote The Light at the End of the Tunnel.
It was a best-seller, you know."

"Yes, I know," Joanna said.