"Chalker,.Jack.L.-.And.The.Devil.Will.Drag.You.Under.V1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

For my father, Lloyd Allen Chalker, Sr., who will never read it, and probably wouldn't like it anyway, and for my mother, Nancy Hopkins Chalker, who will but might not like it, in minor payment for letting a crazy kid Iike me have such weird habits and coming out a writer. No one who enjoys my books will ever know the contributions we all owe these two people.

A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright й 1979 by Jack L. Chalker

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto, Canada.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-84749 ISBN 0-345-27926-3
Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition: August 1979
Cover art by Darrell Sweet

Contents

Main Line +2076 1
Main Line +1130, Zolkar 21
Main Line +2076 61
Main Line + 1502, "Here" 63
Main Line +2076 96
Main Line +1302, Makiva 97
Main Line +2076 134
Main Line +2000, Training Ground #4 136
Main Line +2076 177
Main Line + 1076, Chicago 179
Main Line +2076 250
Epilogue 273

Main Line +2076

WHEN THE END OF THE WORLD IS NEAR, SPEND THE remaining time in a bar.
The little man looked out the slightly frosted windows of the bar and scowled. Although it was closer to noon than to evening time, it was dark out there, and there was a reddish color that made the scene more ominous. The frosting twisted; distorted, and bent the coloration, making it a deep, sparkling red wine.
That reminded the little man of what he had started out to do, and he turned back to the bar itself. "Another double," he ordered, his voice high and raspy, with a trace of accent that seemed to belong vaguely to Europe but to no particular language.
The double arrived and he surveyed it critically, sniffed at it, then started to sip. He looked around at the others in the bar.
Not many. The bar was near the University, but there were no classes now, hadn't been since The Accident. The only people still around these days were the ones working on research projects, trying desperately to find some way to stop or reverse what was happening, or, in the worst case, to cope with the terror that was rapidly approaching-too rapidly, the little man knew. Some might survive, at least for a time. Some, but only a very few.
And only for a time.
Those others here-these few. He looked at them carefully. A couple of old drunks; several tired-looking middle-aged men and women, some in lab whites, sitting, not talking, trying to take some sort of break from nonstop work before they dropped. They'd be sleeping now, he knew, but for the fact that they were too tired to do even that.
Who could sleep now, anyway? he reflected.
None of them fit, though. None were what he wanted, what he had to have. That disturbed him; he had been sending the summons out for days now, and there had been little or no response. People who would do, who would fulfill his needs, were about here, somewhere. He could feel them, sense their auras-not perfect, of course, but adequate.
He sighed, drained the double, and fumbled in his pocket. From it he brought a small object that seemed to blaze with a life of its own, a large precious jewel of absolute precision.
He put it in front of him on the bar and stared at it hard, stroking it with his right hand as if caressing a loved pet. The barman glanced over, looked curiously at the thing and the equally odd little man, and started to go over to him.
The man felt it, felt the disturbance. He slowly took his eyes off the gleaming jewel and stared at the bartender. The curious man suddenly had an odd expression on his face, then turned to continue wiping the glasses. The little man returned to concentrating on the jewel.
His mind went out. Yes, he could feel them, Yin and Yang, male and female. Close by, so close, yet not here, not in proximity. He concentrated hard on them, locked in on them, called them hither.
Not perfect, no, but they would do. They would do -if they would just come to him.

A terrible, cold wind was sweeping through the streets of Reno, Nevada. The woman shivered and pulled her coat closer, trying to ward off some of the icy effects. It didn't help much.
She shouldn't be out in this, she knew. She shouldn't be anywhere near this place-and she didn't know why she was here now, or where she was going, either, yet she kept walking, kept fighting the wind and the cold, barely looking where she was going.
Her mind seemed fogged, slightly confused. She had resolved to end it by the sea, with the Pacific now lapping at the Sierra Nevada, and had prepared for it yet she was here, in Reno, a mountainous desert that no longer had much of a purpose. Most of the people were gone, or huddling inside, or praying in churches for some sort of deliverance. Although she'd never been religious, she had considered joining them at the last. With all other hope gone, the church was the only thing left to cling to.
That was what she had started out to do, out from the fairly comfortable room in a now-deserted motel, out to find a nearby church.
And yet, now the church didn't seem so important any more. Only walking, making her way through the byways and back alleys of this low and spread-out city, going somewhere, it seemed, but she had no idea where. Her legs seemed to have a mind of their own.
The only traffic left now was some military vehicles making their way along streets where only the howls of lonely and deserted animals were heard and an occasional rat would scamper.
She rounded a corner and suddenly felt the full force of the strong wind; it bit into her, and she lowered her head to try to protect her face from the new blast.