The Drowned World - Ballard James Graham (читаем книги онлайн без регистрации .txt) 📗
As the advancing armada headed towards the creek on his left, Kerans scrambled down the fire escape and splashed down the sloping roof to the catamaran. Before he could reach it the heavy wash set up by the hydroplane had rocked the craft adrift, and it floated off into the oncoming mass. Within a few seconds it was engulfed, up-ended by the press of alligators fighting to get into the creek and cut to pieces in their snapping jaws.
A large caiman bringing up the rear spotted Kerans waist-deep among the horse-tails and veered towards him, its eyes steadying. Its rough scaly back and the crest along its tail flexed powerfully as it surged through the water. Quickly Kerans retreated up the slope, slipping once to his shoulders, reached the fire escape as the caiman lumbered out of the shallows on its short hooked legs and lunged at his leaping feet.
Panting, Kerans leaned on the rail, looking down at the cold unblinking eyes which regarded him dispassionately.
"You're a well-trained watchdog," he told it ungrudgingly. He eased a loose brick from the wall and launched it with both hands at the knob on the end of the caiman's snout, grinning as it bellowed and backed off, snapping irritably at the horse-tails and a few drifting spars of the catamaran.
After half an hour, and a few minor duels with the retreating iguanas, he managed to cross the intervening two hundred yards of shoreline and reach Beatrice's apartment house. She met him as he stepped out of the elevator, wide-eyed with alarm.
"Robert, what's happening?" She put her hands on his shoulders and pressed her head against his damp shirt. "Have you seen the alligators? There are thousands of them!"
"_Seen_ them-I was damn nearly eaten by one on your doorstep." Kerans released himself and hurried over to the window, pushed back the plastic vanes. The hydroplane had entered the central lagoon and was circling it at speed, the shoal of alligators following in its wake, those at the tail breaking off to station themselves at points around the shore. At least thirty or forty had remained in the lagoon below, and were cruising about slowly in small patrols, occasionally swerving on a careless iguana.
"Those devilish things must be their watch-guards," Kerans decided. "Like a tame troupe of tarantulas. Nothing better, when you come to think of it."
Beatrice stood beside him, nervously fingering the collar of the jade silk shirt she wore over her black swimsuit. Although the apartment was beginning to look ramshackle and untidy, Beatrice continued to tend her own appearance devotedly. On the few occasions when Kerans called she would be sitting on the patio or before a mirror in her bedroom, automatically applying endless layers of patina like a blind painter forever retouching a portrait he can barely remember for fear that otherwise he will forget it completely. Her hair was always dressed immaculately, the make-up on her mouth and eyes exquisitely applied, but her withdrawn, isolated gaze gave her the waxen, glace beauty of an inanimate mannequin. At last, however, she had been roused.
"But who are they, Robert? That man in the speed-boat frightens me. I wish Colonel Riggs was here."
"He'll be a thousand miles away by now, if he hasn't already reached Byrd. Don't worry, Bea. They may look a piratical crew, but there's nothing we can give them."
A large three-decker paddle-boat, paddles set fore and aft, had entered the lagoon, and was slowly moving over to the three scows drawn up a few yards from where Riggs' base had been moored. It was loaded with gear and cargo, decks crammed with large bales and canvas-swathed machinery, so that there was only six inches of freeboard amidships.
Kerans guessed that this was the group's depot ship, and that they were engaged, like most of the other freebooters still wandering through the Equatorial lagoons and archipelagoes, in pillaging the drowned cities, reclaiming the heavy specialised machinery such as electrical power generators and switchgear that had been perforce abandoned by the government. Nominally such looting was highly penalised, but in fact the authorities were only too eager to Payagenerous price for any salvage.
"Look!"
Beatrice gripped Kerans' elbow. She pointed down at the testing station, where the rumpled, shaggy-haired figure of Dr. Bodkin stood on the roof, waving siowly at the men on the bridge of the paddle-boat. One of them, a bare-chested negro in white slacks and a white peaked cap, began to shout back through a hailer.
Kerans shrugged. "Alan's right. We've everything to gain by showing ourselves. If we help them they'll soon push off and leave us alone."
Beatrice hesitated, but Kerans took her arm. The hydroplane, now free of its entourage, was crossing the central lagoon on its return, leaping lightly through the water on a beautiful wake of foam.
"Come on, if we get down to the jetty in time he'll probably give us a lift."
