"Jack Dann - The Diamond Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

I was working the controls of the Blue Comet while George went into the
kitchen to fix up drinks. Unlike the rest of his neighbors, he had a suite
down here in the pit. I couldn't judge how many rooms he might have had.
For a few seconds, George's Blue Comet train set occupied all my
attention because he had pushed all the rubber-tipped control levers over to
#9 and the locomotives accelerated. They were chugging along so fast that
they'd fly off the tracks when they hit the curves or smash into each other at
the track switches. I pulled all the levers back, but not before a Cowen Comet
Special locomotive pulling freight cars with their own magnetic lifting cranes
jumped the track. Cars scattered across the table; although I prevented a few
cars from falling, I couldn't reach the expensive, heavy black locomotive,
which broke when it hit the floor.
"Good save," George said, returning with two whiskey glasses and a
bottle.
"If that's your idea of a good save, you must have a lot of broken
train sets."
George gestured toward two easy chairs placed around a table in the
corner of the room. "What's the good of having things if you can't break
them?"
There wasn't much I could say to that. We sat down, and he poured far
too much whiskey into cut-glass tumblers.
"That's why I'm down here. I broke too many things. So why give up a
bad habit?"
"What did you break?" I asked.
"Ah -- . Confidences. The golden rule of silence. But only when I got
drunk."
I tasted the whiskey, which was woody and bitter and good, and hefted
the weight of the tumbler.
"You can _try_ breaking that," George said, "but I'd drink up the
contents first. You think it's crystal, don't you? Wrong, my boy. It's diamond
-- and probably enough to buy you the Ritz-Carlton in New York City, I would
judge. But the boys have already told you that this mountain is one big
diamond, didn't they? But that's probably about all they could tell you."
"What can _you_ tell me?"
"Oh, probably everything."
"Can you tell me how to get out of here?" I asked.
"That's easy," he said, smiling and obviously enjoying himself hugely.
"But you'll find out everything soon enough."
"How?"
He pointed upward, then poured himself another drink and topped mine
up.
"For crying out loud, what are you getting at?"
"But don't break anything, 'cause he won't take you back."
"Who won't take me back where?"
"God won't take you back here."
Completely nuts, I thought.
After one more go-round with the trains, I left.
****
He probably was nuts.
But as I soon discovered, he was also probably right.