"Gores, Joe - Kirinyaga" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gores Joe)

while surrounded by companions and trained to it besides? Alone,
on a mountain ridge with Kirinyaga slavering above you
Couldn't condemn, but couldn't let it happen again so someone
else would die. He knocked on the actor's door just before four
o'clock, under a clouded sky with pre-rain wind dancing dust dev-
ils in the parking lot.
"It's open."
Hamlin was alone, sitting in a chair with his bare feet crossed
on the foot of the bed. He had a drink in his left hand.
"Pulling out at first light," said Kendrick.
"And you came to say goodbye? How touching." The magnifi-
cent leonine head followed Kendrick across the room as if to cam-
era cues. He set his bare feet on the rug. "Did I forget to thank
you for saving my life?"
"And for not saving Perkins'?"
"Meaning what, precisely?" asked Hamlin carefully.
Kendrick relaxed against the wall. The assurance he'd sought
was in the raw edges of Hamlin's voice, in the whiteness of his
fingers around the glass. Kendrick shook his head chidingly.
"It won't do, Hamlin. The ends of the safety rope. The broken
arm. The zipped-up sleeping bag."
Hamlin stood up. He swayed slightly, not from drink. His face
was pale, something akin to terror was in his eyes.
"I'm not going to listen to this, Kendrick. My arm"
"was broken by yourself, deliberately, when you saw me com-
ing up the mountain the next morning. You were clinging to that
rock face with both hands the first time I saw you. Both hands.
I'll grant it takes courage of a sort to jam your forearm between a
couple of rocks" He made a snapping motion with his hands.
"It's the image that's all important, isn't it? The image is every-
thing."
"Don't think I'll admit"
"And the safety rope. Brand-new Perlon, a thirty percent
stretch factor to absorb shockyou could have bounced Perkins
up and down on it like a yoyo and it wouldn't have broken."
"It broke." Sweat stood on Hamlin's face; his eyes were like
knobs of bone in spoiled meat. They found the closed bathroom
door, returned to Kendrick. "Broke. Broke. You weren't there, you
couldn't know. It broke, I tell you."
"Two feet off your belt where it would have no chance to be
rubbed through? It was cut. Perkins started sliding, screaming,
you panicked and cut him loose."
"Whowho would believe"
Kendrick laughed. It wasn't a pleasant laugh. Poor bloody Per-
kins. Poor bloody Hamlin, for all that.
"Nobody has to. I just wanted you aware that I know. So if you
ever get your nerve back and are ever tempted again"
Hamlin sat down heavily. He stared straight ahead.
"The cold," he said in a strangled voice. "The altitude." He
shuddered abruptly. "Do you think I ever again"