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

'Oh, Saturday, yes. Three days from now is Saturday. Well, I shall come
back at this same time this coming Saturday, and you can tell me then
whether you have accepted my proposal or not.' The Devil stood up, so
abruptly as to pop straight upright like a jump-cut in a film.
'Wait,' said Allen, clambering up beside him. 'Before you go. How about
telling me why? What do you get out of this?'
The Devil drew the pad of his middle finger over the line where his
eyebrow should have been. It was a delicate, almost feminine gesture.
'Why me?' Allen asked. 'Why am I the one to get the offer?'
'What,' said the Devil, 'what a terribly human sort of question to ask.'
And, as abruptly as before, Allen was in his office, standing in front of
his desk; and Natalie was poking her head round his door in that twitchy
bird-manner of hers, and telling him that Kaufmann was paging him.

: 2 :
A full day's work had bleached the incident of vividness, until the
evening trip home on the tube, in its smelly, crowded, heated immediacy,
gave his memory of the morning on the roof a quaintly chilly, fantastical
edge. It had been, he thought, a dream of peculiar intensity, and at an
odd moment. Presumably he had made his usual way to his office in a sort
of sleep-walking daze (he had asked Natalie, but she could not swear to
have seen him coming in. Maybe, she offered helpfully, he had slipped in
behind her back when she was pouring fresh grinds in the coffee machine?).
At lunch Allen had even stepped outside to have a look up at the roof, but
the angle wasn't right for him to see past the rim. Maybe (he thought
later, in the juggling, shifting underground carriage) maybe it was an
acid flashback. Except that Allen had never tried acid. Speed a few times,
in his clubbing days. But were there such things as speed flashbacks? And
if there were, wouldn't they be more frenetic, not a placid conversation
with the Devil sitting calmly on a skylight?
The tube stopped at a station and a celestialnaut got on. A woman in her
late fifties, with several layers of clothing and cross-shaped hair-clips.
There was a cardboard sign hung about her neck on string: JesusLove
LoveJesus.
She came over and sat next to Allen. 'You've got a lovely smile,' she
said, without preliminary.
'Thank you,' mumbled Allen, embarrassed.
'You have children?'
'A child,' said Allen, shuffling in his seat and looking the other way.
'I can tell. I can tell a father's love shining from his heart. I had four
children,' she went on, 'but one of them died. But Jesus still loved him
and took him to a wonderful place. And I was a manic depressive until I
found Jesus.' She pushed a leaflet into Allen's hands: Celestialnauts:
Jesus's Space Travellers Sent Down to Save. It was in Allen's mind to say
something to her, but she had turned to the person on her left. 'You've
got a lovely smile,' she said.
I met the devil today, Allen thought to himself. Then he tried the thought
again, this time capitalising the protagonist. I met the Devil today.
Devil Devil, Devil Devil.