"Gene Wolfe - Comber" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

Comber
Gene Wolfe
From Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection (2006)

The news whispered by his radio this morning was the same as the news when he and Mona had gone to
bed: the city had topped the crest, and everything was flat and wonderful--if only for a day or two.
"You're flat yourselves," he told it softly, and switched it off.

Mona was still asleep when he had shaved and dressed, her swollen belly at rest on the mattress, her
face full of peace, and her slow inhalations loud to his acute hearing. He grabbed a breakfast bar on his
way through the kitchen and wondered how the hell he could start the car without waking her up.

There was a ball on the driveway, a chewed-up rubber ball some dog had stopped chasing when it had
stopped running. He picked it up and bounced it off the concrete. It bounced a few more times and
settled down to rest again, as round as Mona, though not quite as happy. He tossed it into the car and
followed it.

Press the accelerator, let it up, twist the key. The little engine purred to life as if it knew its work would
be easy today. The suburb passed in a familiar blur.

From the tollway, he eyed the tall buildings that marked the center of the city. The last crest had come
before he was born (the crest of a wholly different wave, something he found hard to imagine) but he
knew that not one of those spumecatchers had been built then. Now the city might have to pay for its
pride and the convenience of having so many offices close together. Pay with its very existence, perhaps.

The brass inclinometer he had bought when he had foreseen the danger the year before was waiting for
him when he reached his desk, solidly screwed to the desktop, its long axis coinciding exactly with the
direction of motion of the plate. He squinted at the needle, and at last got out a magnifying glass. Zero. It
seemed supernatural: a portent.

A memo taped to his monitor warned him that the new angle "which will soon grow steep" would be the
reverse of what it called "the accustomed angle." Everything was to be secured a second time with that
new angle in mind. Workmen would make the rounds of all offices. He was asked to cooperate for the
good of the company. He tossed the memo, woke his processor, and opened Mona's private dream
house instead. His design was waiting there to be tinkered with, as it would not have been if anyone in
authority had found it.

"Okay if I look at your gadget?" It was Phil, and Phil looked without waiting for his permission. "Flat,"
Phil said happily, and laughed. "The plate's flat. First time in my life."

"The last time, too." He closed Mona's dream-house. "For either one of us."

Phil rubbed his hands. "It will all be different. Entirely different. A new slant on everything. Want to go up
to the roof, ol' buddy? Should be a great view."

He shook his head.

It would be very different indeed, he reflected when Phil had left, if the plate overturned. As it very well
might. If the building did not break up when it hit the water, it would point down and would be
submerged. Water would short out the electrical equipment, probably at once; and in any event, the