"Philip Jose Farmer - The Wind Whales Of Ishmael" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

fragile, treacherous being.
Then he went through the hole, the bladder which he was holding sticking for a moment before
his weight pulled it through with a tearing of a skin layer. He was below a vast cloudlike mass of russet
streaks and mushroom-pale tissue. Below him was the edge of a dark blue sea and a jungle. The Rachel
had struck the sea and split into a hundred parts, which were lying on top of the sea as if it were made of
a jelly. The parts of the airship had not yet fallen to the sea. In fact, one part, being carried by the wind
further be-cause, he supposed, it was lighter, would land some-where in the jungle near the sea. The
other would land about half a mile beyond the Rachel.
Before he had fallen another mile -- or so he estimated, though he had no way of knowing for
sure -- he saw the first smash into and then be swallowed up by the jun-gle. It was as if the vegetation
had crawled over it after it had crashed.
The second and smaller half struck the surface of the sea hard enough to split it into a dozen
parts. Some re-bounded and floated westward for a considerable dis-tance before settling down again.
He wondered if he was falling swiftly enough to be smashed against the waters.
It was then that he saw that he was not alone in the sky.
So far away that he could determine only that it was human, but not its features or its sex, another
figure, clinging to the ropy snout of a flesh-colored bladder, was also falling slowly.
Something indefinable made him think that the other survivor was not of the crew of the Rachel.
The other person was higher than he, which meant that he had fallen later than Ishmael. Or
perhaps his bladder was larger than Ishmael's.
During one of his swings, for he was like a pendu-lum whose energy is decaying, he looked
upward past the round of the balloon-bladder. Near the center of the vast mass were several huge holes
torn by the bulks of the Rachel and the two parts of the airship. The holes that he and the other being had
made were invisible.
A moment later he struck the surface of the ocean feet first. He went completely under and came
up chok-ing. The water stung his eyes strongly; what he swal-lowed seemed almost solid with salt.
The bladder had burst on impact, being carried into the water with him. The gas made him cough
even more and his eyes felt as if a white-hot blade had been passed before them.
He found that he did not have to swim or make any special efforts to keep floating. This was a
sea even deader than the Dead Sea of Palestine or the Great Salt Lake of Utah. He could lie on his back
and look up at the great limburger-cheese-colored moon and the enormous red wheel of the sun and not
have to move a muscle.
Yet, though thick with the minerals, the waters moved with a current. The current was not,
however, with the wind but against it. And it was not a steady current. It was formed with the sluggish
waves that wandered westward and did not seem to be of the nature of waves he knew. Though he was
too numb with terror, past and present, to do much analyzing or speculating, he did feel that the waves
were more those of the land than of the sea. That is, they were gener-ated by earthquakes.
Then that strange thought passed, and he slept. Lifted up and lowered gently, moved slowly but
irresistibly to the west, face up, arms crossed (though he did not know that until he awoke) he slept.
When consciousness returned, the sun had not de-scended much from the zenith, though he felt
as if he had slept eight hours or more.
Something bumping into his head had brought him out of a sleep deep in dreams that circled his
wounded mind like sharks around a man thrashing in the water.
He reached up and pushed himself away, sliding only a foot or so in the stiffly yielding waters.
Then he swam to one side and found that he had collided with Queequeg's coffin-buoy. It floated with
only an inch or two draft and seemed to say, "Here I am again, your burial boat, also undestroyed by the
fall."
With an effort that left him gasping, he hauled him-self up on top of the box, the carvings allowing
him a purchase for his fingertips. The coffin settled down a few more inches. Lying with his chin against
the edge, he reached down on both sides and paddled toward the shore. After a while, tiring, he slept