"Gardner Dozois - A Dream at Noonday" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

scream with the majestic cruelty of a stooping eagle and feeling the switches boom and clatter
hollowly under me, and I would fall asleep still moving out and away, away and out.

—The rain is stopping slowly, trailing away across the field, brushing the ground like long,
dangling gray fingers. The tall grass creeps erect again, bobbing drunkenly, shedding its
burden of water as a dog shakes himself dry after a swim. There are vicious little crosswinds
in the wake of the storm, and they make the grass whip even more violently than the
departing caress of the rain. The sky is splitting open above, black rain clouds pivoting
sharply on a central point, allowing a sudden wide wedge of blue to appear. The overcast
churns and tumbles and clots like wet heavy earth turned by a spade. The sky is now a crazy
mosaic of mingled blue and gray. The wind picks up, chews at the edge of the tumbling
wrack, spinning it to the fineness of cotton candy and then lashing it away. A broad shaft of
sunlight falls from the dark undersides of the clouds, thrusting at the ground and drenching it
in a golden cathedral glow, filled with shimmering green highlights. The effect is like that of
light through a stained-glass window, and objects bathed in the light seem to glow very
faintly from within, seem to be suddenly translated into dappled molten bronze. There is a
gnarled, shaggy tree in the center of the pool of sunlight, and it is filled with wet, disgruntled
birds, and the birds are hesitantly, cautiously, beginning to sing again—

And I remember wandering around in the woods as a boy and looking for nothing and
finding everything and that clump of woods was magic and those rocks were a rustlers’ fort
and there were dinosaurs crashing through the brush just out of sight and everybody knew
that there were dragons swimming in the sea just below the waves and an old glittery piece of
Coke bottle was a magic jewel that could let you fly or make you invisible and everybody
knew that you whistled twice and crossed your fingers when you walked by that deserted old
house or something shuddery and scaly would get you and you argued about bang you’re
dead no I’m not and you had a keen gun that could endlessly dispatch all the icky monsters
who hung out near the swing set in your backyard without ever running out of ammunition.
And I remember that as a kid I was nuts about finding a magic cave and I used to think that
there was a cave under every rock, and I would get a long stick to use as a lever and I would
sweat and strain until I had managed to turn the rock over, and then when I didn’t find any
tunnel under the rock I would think that the tunnel was there but it was just filled in with dirt,
and I would get a shovel and I would dig three or four feet down looking for the tunnel and
the magic cave and then I would give up and go home for a dinner of beans and franks and
brown bread. And I remember that once I did find a little cave hidden under a big rock and I
couldn’t believe it and I was scared and shocked and angry and I didn’t want it to be there
but it was and so I stuck my head inside it to look around because something wouldn’t let me
leave until I did and it was dark in there and hot and very still and the darkness seemed to be
blinking at me and I thought I heard something rustling and moving and I got scared and I
started to cry and I ran away and then I got a big stick and came back, still crying, and
pushed and heaved at that rock until it thudded back over the cave and hid it forever. And I
remember that the next day I went out again to hunt for a magic cave.

—The rain has stopped. A bird flaps wetly away from the tree and then settles back down
onto an outside branch. The branch dips and sways with the bird’s weight, its leaves heavy
with rain. The tree steams in the sun, and a million raindrops become tiny jewels, microscopic
prisms, gleaming and winking, loving and transfiguring the light even as it destroys them
and they dissolve into invisible vapor puffs to be swirled into the air and absorbed by the
waiting clouds above. The air is wet and clean and fresh; it seems to squeak as the tall grass
saws through it and the wind runs its fingernails lightly along its surface. The day is squally