"Broderick, Damien - The Dreaming (The Dreaming Dragons)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Broderick Damien)

Fear started to break in again through his barriers of abstraction. This brilliantly illuminated frame before him was a machine, he knew. Presumably a device planted by visitors from the stars, Christ knew how many thousands of years earlier. It's homeostatic, he thought. We triggered it by coming in here. But what does it _do?_ His vanished cousins had placed signs of prohibition at the entrance to the doubly sealed tunnel. Skull and bones on a bottle of lethal poison.
Silently, yellow radiance rippled in hypnotic moire. Abruptly the field of colour turned pure, dazzling white. The light vanished. And they were looking _through_ the grid at a flight of steps that started at a slightly lower elevation than the cavern floor and extended up out of sight.
Alf walked forward a metre, stopped, shook his head. He moved right, left. He lit a cigarette.
'This is fantastic,' he mumbled. 'Three-dimensional display. A hologram. You can actually see into the picture. Why would it show us _steps_, for Christ's sake?'
With great assurance Mouse said, 'For climbing.' Alf grinned at him. A breeze ruffled the boy's light, fine hair. 'Wind.'
Skin crawled on the anthropologist's scarred back. 'It's just blowing in from outside. Up the tunnel.'
Blue eyes gazed at him. Mouse twinkled his fingers. 'Smoke.'
Oh my God, Alf thought. He's right. The streamer of smoke from his cigarette was blowing away from the grid. No, he told himself. It's an optical effect. Just what you'd expect with holograms. But he trod slowly to within a metre of the grid, watched his exhaled smoke drift gently back at him. Dry-mouthed, he took a match from the box and threw it toward the grid.
The match sailed through the bars, fell on the third step, bounced, lay there.
Wiping his sweating face, Alf backed carefully away from the device and squatted before it. 'We're in this up to our necks, kiddo,' he said. 'It's an interstellar artefact. Or maybe it's the remnant of some primeval human civilisation, so old there's no other trace left of it. No, that's nonsense. Mr Von Daniken will be pleased. No wonder the locals were scared shitless of the place.'
Teleportation, he thought. This is Captain Cook, or was it Kook? Kirk? Beam me up to the Transporter Room. Aye, Captain.
Maybe the stairs were not even on Earth. In for a penny, he told himself, in for a pound. But the logic fell apart on that. Presumably the air was identical on both sides, though the pressure over there must be slightly higher. Even so, there'd be some diffusion. And we'd be choking on methane, he concluded, or whatever vile gas they breathed. No, if it were methane, lighting his cigarette would have set off an explosion. Still, the odds against the atmosphere of another world matching ours were overwhelming. So it's probably somewhere else on this planet. Where? Why hasn't it been found?
Alf knew suddenly that he was going to climb through it. All caution was lost in the unarguable necessity of seeing at once where the steps led. He turned to his charge.
'Mouse, I want you to listen very carefully. You're going to do exactly what I say. Right?' The boy gazed back gravely.
Oh Jesus, this is shameful, Alf thought. 'Now I want you to sit right here without a squeak. I'll go as far as the top of the stairs. Then I'm coming straight down and we'll head for home. The experts can do all the dirty work on your little discovery. We'll watch the explorations on TV, from the comfort of our living room. Okay? Not one step, or you'll never come with me on another trip.'
The boy nodded compliantly. Alf slipped the straps of his rucksack from his shoulders, handed Mouse the flashlight for its emblematic comfort, and strode back to the grid. I must be insane, he thought. Sweat covered his body. Very cautiously, he stepped across the bar buried in the rock floor, moved into the other place, and looked to either side. He glanced back, grinned at Mouse, and began to mount the steps.
Like a broken bottle in the guts, then, ripping up into his sternum, the pain opened his mouth in a terrified bellow.
--------
*2. Central Australia*
The defective child sees his uncle step across the grid's bar, glance from side to side, and mount the stair. Something strange occurs. The sound of his footsteps is gone. He watches as Alf turns with a look of startled horror and throws his arms wide with a terrible silent scream. The sunglasses fly from Alf's shirt pocket, clatter noiselessly on the lowest step.
Clutching his chest, his face, the man falls hard on to his knees, thuds sideways down the steps. He lies motionless at the bottom, breathing with great silent gasps.
The boy blinks, drops the flashlight in fright, hesitates, and runs forward, skidding on the dusty rock floor, bursts between the bars of the grid and drops to his knees beside his uncle. In the instant he passes the gate's invisible barrier Alf's harsh, ragged gasps become audible. The air is fine, it has a crisp tang.
'Oh. Oh. Oh,' says the boy. He heaves at the man's bulk, tries to lever one of Alf's limp arms across his shoulder, drags him toward the gate. Behind a grid of metal bars embedded, on this side, in a huge blank wall of mottled marble, he sees the cavern. Staggering, he hoists Alf up and virtually hurls them both at the gap.
His nose and forehead impact, ringingly, on nothingness. A savage jolt bruises the arm trapped between Alf's sliding body and the steel-hard transparent barrier.
Mouse lets his uncle drop again on the lowest step, turns and smashes at the resilient air with his fists. A metre away, the rucksack leans in the dust, a length of rope spilling from it. Something prevents him from reaching it. He abandons the attempt.
Alf, when he turns back to him, is unconscious and choking, wheezing horribly. Mouse sobs, and shakes him. 'Wake up. Bad boy.' But Alf lies bent, his black skin bloodless.
Mouse stands. He cannot return to the cavern; there is another direction. He sprints to the top of the steps.
A vast, dimly lit space extends before him at the top. It is like the interior of a gigantic box. The chamber seems quite empty except for the white sphere positioned in the centre of the enormous floor.
Nothing moves. The place is absolutely quiet. He glances back down at his uncle. Alf's breathing has eased, but he lies motionless at the foot of the steps, face contorted.
A faint, distant scraping echoes from the shadowed depths of the chamber. Poised on his toes, Mouse searches the gloom. Still there is nothing but the white sphere, an enormous billiard ball, perfect and unmarked. Its bulk hides much of the farther wall.
Mouse takes one slow step, and then another, into the immense space. He begins to walk more briskly toward the sphere. His lips part, and he sings a song that Dr Fish has taught him:
'I had a little froggy -- '
The sound of his voice is lost in the huge silence.
A wave of dizziness sweeps through him. He stops, clutching his head. The moment he is still the vertigo is gone. He takes another step, and the chamber spins.
Behind the sphere's hypnotic bulk, voices sound faintly. Mouse retreats, cupping his hands around his mouth and yelling at the top of his voice into the emptiness:
'Help. Alf sick.'
Echoes boom in the huge stillness. Crouching slightly, the boy waits. He hears a babble of male voices, a distant clatter of running feet.
A deep, harsh voice demands: 'Who's there? Come out from behind there with your hands up. We have the zone covered with a machine gun.'
'Sick,' he yells back, staring at the great white egg. He stays where he is.
'Shit, it's a kid,' someone says in astonishment. There is a gabble of argument farther off, and the first voice yells, 'I know it's impossible, Sarge, but I tell you it's a kid and he's right in there in the middle of the fucking lethal zone. Hey son,' the man shouts, 'stick close to the wall and make your way round to us. Whatever you do, keep away from that white globe in the middle of the floor.'
Mouse runs back to the smooth, mottled-marble wall of the chamber, cutting across at an angle, and begins to circle toward the voices. His dizziness is gone; there is in its place a kind of hum, a deep vibration singing in his bones, a sense of awesome power which could tear him to ribbons if he makes the wrong move.
Past the point where the bulge of the sphere has obscured his view of the men, he sees them standing framed in a jagged opening which has been blasted from the other side through the wall of the chamber. They stay well back from the edge; nobody comes forward to help him. He reaches one corner of the chamber, runs the hundred-metre width of the huge box, starts along the wall to the pile of rubble lying at the base of the hole. The air begins to stink now of grease, sweaty human bodies, strange chemicals.
Mouse reaches the heap of broken stone, breathing hard, and looks up at the three men in grey uniforms who loom above him. One holds a submachine gun; it is pointed at his chest. The boy cringes, and his hands move jerkily in the air.
'For Christ's sake, Corporal,' says a tall crewcut man with three stripes on his arm, 'put the gun down. You're terrifying the boy.' He swings back to Mouse. 'Relax, son, we're not going to hurt you. It's just that we weren't expecting you.' The third man sniggers nervously. The first ignores him and adds mildly, 'We're rather interested in finding out how you got here.'
He is unfolding a rope ladder as he speaks, and drops one end over the edge. 'Come on up; we'll fix you a cup of coffee. There'll be a few questions, but you don't have anything to fear.'
The boy clambers up over lumps of chipped marble, dust puffing at his feet, making him cough. He seizes the ladder and climbs nimbly the remaining metres to the edge of the hole. The crewcut man helps him into a broad tunnel that extends back from the opening.
'Alf,' Mouse says urgently. His eyes dart in distress. 'Sick.' Abruptly, he bursts into tears and tugs at the man's arm, attempting to draw him back over the edge.
'Jesus,' one of them says, 'it's a fucking dummy.'
The sergeant rounds on him furiously. 'Shut up. He's scared shitless. Another word from you, private, and you'll be spending your next rest break down here.' He turns back to Mouse. 'Who's Alf?' he asks, acutely. 'Are you saying there's someone else in there, someone who's hurt?'
Tears running unheeded down his cheeks, the boy nods. 'Help,' he says imploringly.