"Bailey-Conquistador" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bailey Dale)

swept up in its smooth trajectory. Nothing of the sort had ever happened to him
before. It seemed, momentarily, as if he had become the fish. Brine pulsed
through his gills and water caressed his sleek armored length as he ascended
toward the distant surface, climbing, climbing, and diving again to cruise the
graveled bottom. When the fish drifted into concealment behind the coral ridge,
Howard returned to himself with a shock. Bubbles danced surface ward through the
still water.

The icy touch of departing magic rippled through Howard, along his cheeks, his
arms, down unsteady legs. Bemused, he stared at the tiny models perched atop the
ridge: a diver in an old-fashioned diving suit, an overturned pirate's chest
spilling gaudy wealth into the water.

"A conquistador," Howard whispered into the stillness. "Frank, I've got to have
it. Can you hold it for me?"

"I don't know. It's pretty rare, and --"

"Just for a day or two. Till Monday evening. That's all."

"Howard, I --"

"Frank, I've never asked you to do anything like this before. Never. One
weekend, that's all I ask."

"Till Monday, then," Frank said. "Hell, Howard, can you even afford it?"

Howard looked down at the tiny label affixed to the lower right hand comer of
the conquistador's tank:

Conquistador(Icthyus-Conquistadorus)$1200

"I don't know," he said. And he thought of Bethesda, sitting at home as she
always did. He supposed he did know, but he could never say as much. "I'm going
to try."

ALL THAT long weekend the conquistador haunted Howard's dreams. Saturday
afternoon he whiled away in the undersea glow of his basement hideaway. He
cleaned his largest aquarium, installed a fresh filter and air pump, and mixed
new water, carefully adjusting the heater to 75 degrees F. Eyes blind to the
elaborate waltzes of the tropical fish in their glass prisons, deaf even to the
maudlin television sentiment that filtered through the ceiling, he spent the day
transported by a recurring vision of the conquistador.

Sunday he passed in a daze, ticking off Bethesda's list of chores with the
plodding inattention of a somnambulist. Finally, on Sunday evening, his mind
awash in a flood of tropical brine, a whole school of conquistadors performing
synchronized swimming routines before his unbelieving eyes, he made his way
upstairs to face Bethesda. She sat in the BarcaLounger, her feet propped up,
watching a rerun of Gone with the Wind on the wide-screen television. in one