"Bradbury, Ray - The Foghorn (ss) v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

We ascended the eighty steps, talking and taking our time. At the top, McDunn
switched off the room lights so there'd be no reflection in the plate glass. The
great eye of the light was humming, turning easily in its oiled socket. The Fog
Horn was blowing steadily, once every fifteen seconds.
"Sounds like an animal, don't it?" McDunn nodded to himself. "A big lonely
animal crying in the night. Sitting here on the edge of ten billion years
calling out to the Deeps, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. And the Deeps do answer,
yes, they do. You been here now for three months, Johnny, so I better prepare
you. About this time of year," he said, studying the murk and fog, "something
comes to visit the lighthouse."
"The swarms of fish like you said?"
"No, this is something else. I've put off telling you because you might think
I'm daft. But tonight's the latest I can put it off, for if my calendar's marked
right from last year, tonight's the night it comes. I won t go into detail,
you'll have to see it yourself. Just sit down there. If you want, tomorrow you
can pack your duffel and take the motorboat into land and get your car parked
there at the dinghy pier on the cape and drive on back to some little inland
town and keep your lights burning nights. I won't question or blame you. It's
happened three years now, and this is the only time anyone's been here with me
to verify it. You wait and watch."
Half an hour passed with only a few whispers between us. When we grew tired
waiting, McDunn began describing some of his ideas to me. He had some theories
about the Fog Horn itself.
"One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean
on a cold sunless shore and said, 'We need a voice to call across the water, to
warn ships; I'll make one. I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog
that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night
long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn
with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like
November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so
alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls,
and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear
it in the distant towns. I'll make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call
it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the
briefness of life.’"
The Fog Horn blew.
"I made up that story," said McDunn quietly, "to try to explain why this thing
keeps coming back to the lighthouse every year. The Fog Horn calls, I think, it
comes. . ."
"But-" I said.
"Sssst!" said McDunn. "There!" He nodded out to the Deeps.
Something was swimming towards the lighthouse tower.
It was a cold night, as I have said; the high tower was cold, the light coming
and going, and the Fog Horn calling and calling through the ravelling mist. You
couldn't see far and you couldn't see plain, but there was the deep sea moving
on its way about the night earth, flat and quiet, the colour of grey mud, and
here were the two of us alone in the high tower, and there, far out at first,
was a ripple, followed by a wave, a rising, a bubble, a bit of froth. And then,
from the surface of the cold sea came a head, a large head, dark-coloured, with
immense eyes, and then a neck. And then--not a body--but more neck and more! The