"Chalker, Jack L - DG1 - The River of the Dancing Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

kind of thing, sort of like when I turned thirty and looked in
the mirror. There wasn't any mirror, really, but back there in
that car I still kind of looked at myself and was, well, scared,
frightened, maybe even revolted at what I saw staring back.
Something just sorta said to me, 'If this is the rest of your life,
then why bother to be alive at all?'"

He thought, but could find little else to say right then. What
was the right thing to say to somebody like this, anyway?

Flecks of rain struck his windshield, and he flipped on the
wipers, the sound adding an eerie, hypnotic background to the
sudden roar of a midsummer thunderstorm on a truck cab.
Peering out, he thought for a moment he saw two Interstate 10
roadways -- an impossible sort of fork he knew just couldn't
be there. He kicked on the brights and the fog lights, and the
image seemed to resolve itself a bit, the right-hand one looking
more solid. He decided that keeping to the white stripe down
the side of the road separating road and shoulder was the safest
course.

At the illusory intersection, there seemed for a moment to
be two trucks, one coming out of the other, going right, while
the other, its ghostly twin, went left. The image of the second
truck, apparently passing his and vanishing quickly in the dis-
tance to his left, startled him for a moment. He could have
sworn there wasn't anything behind him for a couple of miles,
and the CB was totally silent.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and things
took on a more normal appearance in minutes. He glanced over
at the woman and saw that she was asleep -- best thing for her,
he decided. Ahead loomed a green exit sign, and, still a little
unnerved, he badly wanted to get his bearings.

The sign said, "Ruddygore, 5 miles."

That didn't help him much. Ruddygore? Where in hell was

that? The next exit should be Sheffield. A mile marker ap-
proached, and he decided to check things out.

The little green number said, "4."

He frowned again, beginning to become a little unglued.
Four? That couldn't be right. Not if he was still on I-10.
Uneasily, he began to think of that split back there. Maybe it
was a split -- that other truck had seemed to curve off to the
left when he went right. If so, he was on some cockeyed
interstate spur to God knew where.