"Gardner Dozois - The Hanging Curve" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

hand away, there it still was, the ball, hanging motionless a few feet above home
plate.
The fans in the stadium had been shocked into stunned silence for a few
heartbeats. But now a buzzing whisper of reaction began to swell, soon growing into
a waterfall roar. No one understood what had happened. But something had
happened to stop the game at the most critical possible moment, and nobody liked
it. Fistfights were already beginning to break out in the outfield bleachers.
Rivera had stepped forward to help Kellenburger tug at the ball, trying to
muscle it down. They couldn’t move it. Holzman, as puzzled as everyone else,
walked in to see what in the world was going on. Managers flew out of the dugouts,
ready to protest something, although they weren’t quite sure what. The rest of the
umpires trotted in to take a look. Soon home plate was surrounded by almost
everybody who was down on the ballfield, both dugouts emptying, all shouting,
arguing, making suggestions, jostling to get a close look at the ball, which hung
serenely in midair.
Within minutes, fights were breaking out on the field as well. The stadium
cops were already having trouble trying to quell disturbances in the seats, where a
full-fledged riot was brewing. They couldn’t handle it. The fans began tearing up the
seats, trampling each other in panicked or angry surges, pouring out on to the field
to join in fistfights with the players. The city cops had to be called in, then more
cops, then the riot squad, who set about forcibly closing the stadium, chasing the
outraged fans out with tear gas and rubber bullets. Dozens of people were injured,
some moderately seriously, but, by some other miracle, none were killed. Dozens of
people were arrested, including some of the players and the manager of the Yankees.
The stadium was seriously trashed. By the time the umpires got around to officially
calling the game, it had become clear a long time before that World Series or no
World Series, no game was going to be played in Independence Stadium that night,
or, considering the damage that had been done to the bleachers, probably for many
nights to come.
 Finally, the last ambulance left, and the remaining players and grounds crew
and assorted team personnel were herded out, still complaining and arguing. After a
hurried conference between the police and the owners, the gates were locked behind
them.
The ball still hung there, not moving. In the empty stadium, gleaming white
under the lights, it somehow looked even more uncanny than it had with people
swarming around it. Two cops were left behind to keep an eye on it, but the sight
spooked them, and they stayed as far away from it as they could without leaving the
infield, checking it every few minutes as the long night crept slowly past. But the ball
didn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Most of the riot had been covered live across the nation, of course, television
cameras continuing to roll as fans and players beat each other bloody, while the
sportscasters provided hysterical commentary (and barricaded the doors of the
press room). Reporters from local stations had been there within twenty minutes, but
nobody knew quite how to handle the event that had sparked the riot in the first
place; most ignored it, while others treated it as a Silly Season item. The reporters
were back the next morning, though, some of them, anyway, as the owners and the
grounds crew, more cops, the Commissioner of Baseball, and some Concerned City
Hall Bigwigs went back into the stadium. In spite of the bright, grainy, mundane light
of morning, which is supposed to chase all fancies away and dissolve all troubling
fantasms, the ball was still frozen there in midair, motionless, exactly the same way it