"(Brian Aldiss)-Outside" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldiss Brian W)

the same, he kept doggedly down the stairs, feet noiseless on the heavy
carpet.
Jagger had rounded a corner. He was whistling quietly as he went.
Harley heard him unlock a door. That would be the store - no other doors
were locked. The whistling faded.
The store was open. No sound came from within. Cautiously, Harley
peered inside. The far wall had swung open about a central pivot,
revealing a passage beyond. For minutes Harley could not move, staring
fixedly at this breach.
Finally, and with a sense of suffocation, he entered the store.
Jagger had gone through there. Harley also went through. Somewhere he did
not know, somewhere whose existence he had not guessed .... Somewhere that
wasn't the house.... The passage was short and had two doors, one at the
end rather like a cage door (Harley did not recognize a lift when he saw
one), one in the side, narrow and with a window.
The window was transparent. Harley looked through it and then fell
back choking. Dizziness swept in and shook him by the throat.
Stars shone outside.
With an effort, he mastered himself and made his way back upstairs,
lurching against the banisters. They had all been living under a ghastly
misapprehension....
He barged into Calvin's room and the light lit. A faint, sweet smell
was in the air, and Calvin lay on his broad back, fast asleep.
"Calvin! Wake up!" Harley shouted.
The sleeper never moved. Harley was suddenly aware of his own
loneliness and the eerie feel of the great house about him. Bending over
the bed, he shook Calvin violently by the shoulders and slapped his face.
Calvin groaned and opened one eye.
"Wake up, man," Harley said. "Something terrible's going on here."
The other propped himself on one elbow, communicated fear rousing him
thoroughly.
"Jagger's LEFT THE HOUSE," Harley told him. " There's a way outside.
We're - we've got to find out what we are." His voice rose to an
hysterical pitch. He was shaking Calvin again. "We must find out what's
wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment - or we're
all monsters!"
And as he spoke, before his staring eyes, beneath his clutching
hands, Calvin began to wrinkle up and fold and blur, his eyes running
together and his great torso contracting. Something else - something
lively and alive - was forming in his place.
Harley only stopped yelling when, having plunged downstairs, the
sight of the stars through the small window steadied him. He had to get
out, wherever "out" was.
He pulled the small door open and stood in fresh night air.
Harley's eye was not accustomed to judging distances. It took him
some while to realize the nature of his surroundings, to realize that
mountains stood distantly against the starlit sky, and that he himself
stood on a platform twelve feet above the ground. Some distance away,
lights gleamed, throwing bright rectangles onto an expanse of tarmac.
There was a steel ladder at the edge of the platform. Biting his lip,