Аннотация: Kashi is asking Shiraki residents about the rocks in the bay. Arrival in Shiraki by barge with Yuto. The story of a sailor released on shore.
Interlude 28. West Coast of Japan, Shiraki Bay, Shiraki fishing village
A well-dressed gentleman in a civil European three-piece suit and tie looked out on the streets of Shiraki against the backdrop of the mountainous coast, dotted in some places with detached buildings... Well, it's not that inappropriate. Strange. A small briefcase, rather even a folder for papers in the form of a briefcase, a completely calm look. If it weren't for his youth - and he looked to be in his mid-twenties at most - one would have assumed that this was an official from the district council who came to the village administration. Moreover, the young man went to the administration. Logically. Otherwise, why would he put on these uncomfortable European clothes?
Two hours later, at Uncle Xi's cafe (the full name of the place was "Fish from Xi Mountain," and no fisherman would say such nonsense out loud!) The first secretary of the head of the settlement administration came to have lunch, and between tea and fried rice with shrimp, he told the interested local "beau monde" that it was just another representative of the contractor company who had arrived to clean up the water area. It's a hopeless case, but at least this one is polite. He came himself, before bringing his barge (and stranding it, which was regularly washed up along the fairway in the mouth of the bay by November), asked for advice on the placement of his people and even agreed to gather elders from fishermen so that their clumsy actions would not interfere with fishing. In general, he's a thorough guy, even if he's too young, yes.
The next day, Mr. manager of the Water and Resource Concern actually gathered the respectable society at Xi and even paid in advance, with some reserve, for treats and tea. Well, that's how we can talk. And we talked.
Kashi, namely, he, as the director of the concern, had to go to Shiraki, during the conversation he received (and partially recorded) just a huge amount of information about the bay of the same name with the village of fishermen, and now he thought with some bewilderment that he would rush to solve the issue of cleaning the reservoir from underwater objects without having at least one at hand. Bringing down a sea spirit is an impossible gamble. And what did the other contractors expect? No, those who are smarter, at first, like him, communicated with the locals and curtailed the work before it began. And here are the others... Two sunken barges. A floating crane that sank two years ago. Abandoned cabins with things (unloaded, but could not be picked up), which enterprising locals kept in order and handed over to new contractors. Nasty "road" stones - the locals, not without reason, considered them mystically dangerous objects, saying that they, as if alive, could surround the ship at night so that it could not sail out. They also showed the shoal on the map, where the famous Kashi drowned island of spirits was located, and strongly recommended avoiding the "bad place" by the tenth road. Not only is the depth only two or three meters, but everyone who ventured fishing there, and some of those who ventured on a small-draft motorboat, got into a lot of trouble, from simple diarrhea to a streak of terrible failures for many years. This is not counting the sudden drownings, capsized fishing boats and motor junks and other "joys" of the open sea.
At night, the Corpse Eater visited the submerged dam and noted that a third of the stones had already reached the place. There were no guaranteed exorcists in the area, and he took off his disguise and tried to blend into the surrounding background. It was unpleasant. From the distant shoal of the drowned island, where a thin, trembling column of natural mana rested against the sky, madness and bursts of power desperately breathed. Disordered, meaningless... dying. The stones of the "road" themselves felt like clumps of darkness with rare blue lights randomly scattered across the surface of the monoliths... and their power wasn't "silent" either. Some kind of whisper made its way through their invisible underwater movement, a frightening and illogical grace...
Kashi returned the disguise and exhaled: it's better this way. After almost two months under protection, Amakawa's amulet "armor" was perceived by him not as something alien, but on the contrary - as a cozy and durable protection. It was a paradox, but when he cut off part of his super senses with amulets and clothes, he felt himself... Freer? It was as if nothing else prevented him from breathing deeply and living the way he wanted, rather than following the predetermined dictates of "prevailing conditions." Previously, the Corpse Eater sometimes envied people: no yokai could have so much freedom from the world... Now he knew that it wasn't any easier for people. Freedom is the opportunity to change one alternative to another at will... Perhaps they can make the list of alternatives one position longer at Amakawa-sama's fingertips? Suddenly, Kashi heard a soft splash: about forty meters from the shore, waves were hitting something invisible under the water... invisible without detector glasses. A stone monolith, a three-ton block, rested on the sand, and Yokai could have sworn it hadn't been there ten minutes ago. The blue lights seemed to be glowing eyes clinging to the figure of the spirit on the shore. Kashi shrugged his shoulders and went to the cabins. Sleep. Even a yokai needs sleep. And in the dark, he was awakened by a low rumble coming from the stone. Daydarbotchhi - Dar - finally reached the coast.
149
Who hasn't dreamed of being a ship's captain in childhood? I was dreaming. And yet - an electric locomotive driver, and even a little subway driver: of course, the hidden places of underground tunnels. Romance, damn it! And here we are on the ship, although, of course, I am not the captain... But he's almost an admiral! A barge with an overhead crane suitable for shallow-water operations, which looks like an almost square box (the bow and stern are straight), was rented by us without any problems from the Tsuruga Port water area control service. Together with the captain-helmsman and two sailors. And for the first time I saw how the magic of subjugation of consciousness looks and works. In the range of perception of the glasses, I clearly saw a bright, multifaceted figure-a network, comfortably located inside the skull of each of the employees. The question of "to do or not" was not even there. Of the yokai crew, only the "multitank" Pachi managed to learn the marine business, having completed a week-long course of work on the same crane that is installed on the Swallow. Yes, who used what and how many things to call this clumsy trough that, I'm even afraid to imagine.
Coastal navigation around the islands is not too dangerous - even now, during the autumn storms - but we hedged our bets: Shizuka settled on the bow of the ship, controlling the sea water around the stem, and our barge accelerated to twelve knots without any problems, threatening to break its own record on the measured mile, immediately after construction. Also, an octopus with a turtle right on the move, as soon as the port of registry disappeared astern, the hull below the waterline was cleared of overgrown shells and algae (I suspect they just ate it, it's easy in animal form) by further increasing the seaworthiness of our vessel. We live! Actually, as soon as we went out to sea, everyone's mood immediately lifted, except for snake: as it turned out, the "soft" discouragement of excessive curiosity is a rather complex spell, and the well-known "any yokai can subdue a person" should be read as "to suppress consciousness and control like a puppet." As a result, Mizuchi had to do the thing she hates the most, after which she sat gloomily at the bow rail and asked not to touch her for a while. Since I understood the state of the Goddess of Rivers perfectly well, but I couldn't do anything anyway, I had to go to Hiroe and Yu, who were "finishing" another Cunning Plan for the umpteenth time.
"If a thing can't be hidden unnoticed, hide it in plain sight." That's short. In long, Hiroe and Yu still managed to make their crazy script into a full-fledged film. More precisely, with the help of Shimomuro, the future plot of the film acquired the features of infernal plagiarism.: It featured Spider-Man, Terminator T-1000, ninja turtles (4 pieces at once), a giant octopus monster and saving the world.
Moreover, our screenwriter with the X-shaped hairpin reserved the role of spider-man for herself. You have to be so fanatical about the character! I thought Yu was into magic. Gets carried away, yes. But for the man in the red and blue tights with a spiderweb pattern, the girl was just heartbroken. "Everything will be simple with the shooting, I have a costume, I brought it, I'll show you now." And she showed it. I wonder if her parents are this one... Uh, the suit, have you seen it?! Or rather, your own daughter in THIS?!
When Shimomuro changed her clothes and went down to the dining room, for the first time, I thanked all the local gods at once that no one from adults was ever at my house! Well, what can I say? The costume was quite authentic - that is, tight-fitting. And thin. Five seconds after Yu's appearance to the people (it took us that long to get out of our stupor) They closed my eyes at the age of six, turned me around 180 degrees with a chair, and offered to immediately forget "everything you saw there, you know." It's a good thing they didn't call me a pervert. The fact that less than a week had passed since I had a close conversation with Ageha was valiantly ignored, and I courageously suppressed the offended "what didn't I see there".
Moreover, I myself began to doubt that I had seen enough: otherwise, why would the "indecent" costume have been subjected to a full-scale inspection on Yu (with criticism of moral standards of decency, yes) for half an hour, and all this time one of the girls carefully held her hands on my face?
All three of them managed to hold on to me, and judging by the screams, they also managed to hold on to Shimomuro. Kami-sama... The funny thing is that Yu will be starring in this costume in his chosen role, and the meaning of these actions in my house, which delayed our packing in Tsuruga for an hour, completely eluded me! The charms of the women's collective, yeah...
***
I must say that the Swallow reached its destination in just ten hours, during which we "enjoyed" the sea to the deepest depths of our souls: we were chilled, soaked in rain and spray, then Yu and Rinko were seasick on a sudden wave, despite the fact that Shizuka continued to "push through" the waves on the way without letting the ship sway. And then... Four more hours of maneuvers in the bay! The empty self-propelled barge was "light" and therefore obeyed the steering wheel and eight maneuvering water cannons relatively well, two of which looked straight ahead.
But we would have at least scratched the valuable vessel from below if it hadn't been for the sea spirits. In general, I promised Pachi that as soon as I had free time, I would send him to get a sailor-helmsman license: the octopus, who was forced to change the captain at the helm, had so much practice that at least it was gone. Because the vile stones and no less vile sand obtained from the destroyed monoliths flatly refused to behave like normal soil! The echo sounder displayed one and a half hundred marks, according to which the bottom level directly ahead had three or four depth options - ultrasound was reflected from different temperature layers of water and, in an unknown way, gave several marks for each stone, each shoal. Трындец! How the locals even manage to swim and catch something in this soup with stone dumplings remains a mystery to me...
As a result, with the help of the crew, Shizuki, the diving Patchi and Takahashi, and such-and-such a Japanese mother, we secured the barge on four anchors, after which we somehow made it to the cabins on the shore (and the snake had to stay on board) and just fell asleep! That's it, we'll work tomorrow! And to shoot a film, and to lift stones, and to launch a "legend" composed by Hiroe-disinformation...
Interlude 29. Shiraki fishing village, Fish from Xi Mountain Cafe. Taro motor sailor, resting shift
The next day, the employers started a frenzy of activity: right in the morning they went out with a local pilot on his boat into the waters of the bay, lifted two flying things with propellers and video cameras (fortunately the rain stopped and even the clouds slightly dispersed), and within a few hours transferred the search result to the operational map. Then their boss, the captain, and the crane operator locked themselves in the captain's cabin and decided something there, after which they personally announced a day off for him, Taro. Well, that's cool! While the motorboat was setting up buoys with the designation "bottom work area", while the barge was maneuvering, taking up a place next to the first object, he watched a lot of little girls and a boy running back and forth along the shore with photos and video cameras, shooting something from tripods, drawing paths on the sand of a narrow beach and doing some more bullshit.
Not that he was that interested... but then the kids noticed his presence-and off they went!
"Taro-san, would you like to participate in the filming of the fragments for the short film? Of course, as a sailor of the heroic crew of a barge that discovered an ancient monster! Yes, yes, like Godzilla, only cooler. No, we have a giant octopus!.."
"Your food, man." Xi-oji-san, the owner of the establishment, placed a bowl of invariable rice in front of the early visitor.The grandfather stood in place, looking around the cafe, which was empty until lunchtime, and sat down next to the sailor:
"Do you mind?"
"Not at all, Xi-san! It turns out to be awesome, it's not for nothing that your employers recommended your cafe to me."
"Oh, that's right! Moreover, my establishment is the only one for thirty kilometers around. But I don't relax without competition, no, no! Sometimes people come to us specially from a neighboring village to eat my rice and drink sake. By the way, how about a cup?"
"Xi-oji, it's morning!"
"Yes, yes, it's on the house, so that the breakfast is better absorbed, hehe."
"Great idea!"
Over a cup of warm alcohol, the conversation flowed more quickly, jumping from topic to topic:
"...yes, Tsuruga is full of sheep, one license is that of a captain, but it's like on a destroyer..."
"...Fishing villages are emptying, everyone is in the city, everyone is in the center of life. And giant seiners are caught, without a soul, mechanically..."
"...what do they even understand, these bureaucrats are land-based..."
By the fifth serving, when the rice was finished and the alcohol was pleasantly warm in my stomach, not yet intoxicating, but already warming, the conversation returned to the "topic of the day."
"What are your employers like anyway? And then we argued again, they would do it, they wouldn't do it, I even put a twenty, I liked their main one, he was so serious... and here they came with one barge, and even less than a dozen people..."
The establishment stood low on the slope of one of the hills that make up the coast. Through the glazed walls of the veranda, separated from the hall only by a symbolic step and open panels, the bay and the sea barge standing there surrounded by buoys were clearly visible. The boom of her crane, now gradually picking out slings fixed around a stone the size of a small room, was wound over the port side.
On a single mast above the bridge of the ship was raised the international flag signal "Attention! The diver is working!"
...Last time, we sailed on as many as two barges, and with a dredger, and there were two boats... And sho? They fiddled and fiddled, the floodlights were shining, all the shrimps were scared for three days... and all the same, one of their tubs went to the bottom.
Taro, who did not want to think about the strangeness of his employer at all, rubbed his cheek with his thumb and pointed to the ship lowering into the open hold, a boulder glistening in the sun, seemingly so miniature from here, with large drops of water falling from it.
"They're shipping the fourth one now..."
"The fifth one," Grandpa prompted.
Here's a diamond eye! Here they are, the villagers, they seem to be chatting, but they notice everything around them! The desire to feed some kind of rubbish to a pesky and distrustful Xi, who was ready to torture Tarot for half a day with stupid questions for twenty, interspersed with complaints about life, turned out to be completely unbearable. So why not repeat it for the kids?
Taro pointedly looked around and leaned over to the owner of the diner. He also looked around and repeated the client's movement.
"That, oji-san, is just silence, I didn't say that..."
Grandfather swore by the Buddha that he would be as mute as the grave!
"In short, the employers themselves don't say anything like that, but I listened to the kids they brought with them..."
"Fi, I found someone to listen to. They probably haven't even started high school yet..."
"Maybe they didn't, but they have camera equipment with them for the price of half our galoshes..."
"You're lying!"
"If you don't believe it, look for yourself. Cameras, these flying machines, computers, a satellite dish..."
"And is it expensive? Yes, my brother-in-law has a satellite dish, and he didn't go broke."
"Okay, okay, like a quarter of a barge..."
"Well, don't pull it off!"
"Well, in short, this little thing will be like making a movie for school. With such big and fancy cameras, yeah, yeah."
"Why use studio cameras for school cinema?"
"Tc! I told you: As if!"
"I figured it out. But really?"
"But in fact, these kids are the children of the cameramen of the Toho Studio crew..."
"You're all lying."
"You're lying! What do you think the operator kids are becoming?"
"Did they tell you that themselves?"
"No, I kind of heard it when they were talking to each other..."
"You're all lying!"
"If you don't like it, don't listen..."
"Okay, okay, no offense. Come on... кампай! And then what?"
"Farther... Okay, go ahead... What am I talking about... ah! Shooting! So, an engineer from a company, maybe Fuji, or maybe Toyota, invented a walking crane. It seems like a promising thing, but maybe not... so we decided to try it out. If it works well, you can immediately invest money in advertising and production, and if it doesn't work well, then no one will guess..."
"You're drunk, I see. Some kind of faucet... Like flying saucers, by God."
"No one should find out that way, I say!"
"Did you find out?"
"Yes, I listened there, I looked here..."
"Well, a faucet and a faucet, that's what. What's secret? You can also arrange normal tests. Even better!"
"Yes, one of the employees made a reservation that this thing looks like something military, like a giant robot or something... I think maybe they want to sell it to the soldiers, and it's not a crane at all?"
"You're definitely drunk, come here, take a breath. Come by tonight. Otherwise, everyone here is their own, it's boring without new faces!"
...Needless to say, by evening the whole village knew that a terribly secret test of a new experimental weapon of the Self-Defense Forces would be conducted under the guise of bottom work? Just shhh! Otherwise, the damned Yankees will find out and put the prime minister back with cancer... It's not good...