"Adam Roberts - Balancing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Robert)

Balancing
a short story by Adam Roberts

: 1 :
Allen met the Devil on the way into work. 'Come along,' said the Devil. 'I
have a proposition.' But meeting, meeting. Strange to have the same word
for meeting and re-meeting; don't you think we ought to have a word for
'to meet again'? Allen felt the dщjр vu strongly, as soon as the tang of
the Devil's presence registered on his consciousness: the sheer
familiarity. Old shoes creasing like cloth round his feet, not new leather
squeaking and rubbing his heel. Already-breathed air.
So, here at the beginning, is the important part.
One minute Allen was standing next to this long-faced, pale man dressed
all in brown, as the lobby buzzed around him. He barely had time to
register the presence -- indeed, was studiously avoiding meeting his eye,
looking past him at the closing lift door. Bums and strangers did
sometimes make their way past security to loiter in the lobby and try to
coax money from the well-off workers hurrying to get to work on time.
Allen had even wondered if security colluded in this; if, perhaps,
enterprising mendicants paid a small fee to encourage the security guards
to look the other way in the knowledge that they would make it back and
more from the affluent pressed-for-time folk within. The lift door hushed
shut.
And the next minute, with no sense of intervening time, Allen was on the
roof. It was no illusion. The stainless-steel panels (the architect's name
was Frank L Tipler, and he was an award-winner -- you may have heard of
him) sloped gently to the architectural ha-ha of the guttering, and beyond
was nothing but air and the view of crammed stone and steel of London
Town. A push of air was moving over Allen's face, touching a line of chill
inside his shirt-collar. He turned about with the slow deliberation of a
drunk, not fully believing his senses. He turned through a hundred-eighty,
but saw only the roof stretching upwards to its central ridge, and the
chimney-pot bunching of lightning conductors and television aerials. Then
a certain alarm took hold as he realised he was on the roof, and he turned
again, this time through a complete three-sixty. Turned a little too
rapidly in the recklessness of his fore-shock, slipped, and started
skittering on one knee down the slope.
'Woah,' said the Devil. He reached over with a hand whose strength of grip
was not advertised in its slimness, and grasped Allen's shoulder. 'Watch
yourself, Mr slippy.'
Allen felt himself hauled upright again. Here was the gentleman in brown:
a face completely hairless, even to the point of lacking eyebrows and
eyelashes; skin pale without quite bleaching into albino. He was wearing a
tight-fitting cap of what looked like brown cashmere, an almost hippy
piece of headgear. But his suit was very formal, bespoke and
precision-tailored. His large-lidded eyes had a sleepy, half-open look,
and his very long nose drew a firm line down to his small, pursed mouth,
like a fleshy exclamation mark. A dimple tucked into his narrow chin.
'What?' asked Allen, loudly. 'What?'
It was ungainly, tell you the truth. He didn't come over very well.