"L. Sprague De Camp - Lest Darkness Fall" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Camp L Sprague)

"That's all right. This coat will shed water."
Tancredi shrugged. They bucketed down the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and screeched around the
corner into the Via Cestari. Padway got out at the Piazza del Pantheon, and Tancredi departed,
waving both arms and shouting: "Tomorrow at eight, then? Si, fine."
Padway looked at the building for a few minutes. He had always thought it a very ugly one, with
the Corinthian front stuck on the brick rotunda. Of course that great concrete dome had taken
some engineering, considering when it had been erected. Then he had to jump to avoid being
spattered as a man in a Fascist uniform tore by on a motorcycle.
Padway walked over to the portico, round which clustered men engaged in the national sport of
loitering. One of the things that he liked about Italy was that here he was, by comparison, a fairly
tall man. Thunder rumbled behind him, and a raindrop struck his hand. He began to take long
steps. Even if his trench coat would shed water, he didn't want his new fifty-lire Borsalino soaked.
He liked that hat.
His reflections were cut off in their prime by the grand-daddy of all lightning flashes, which struck
the Piazza to his right. The pavement dropped out from under him like a trapdoor.
His feet seemed to be dangling over nothing. He could not see anything for the reddish-purple
after-images in his retinas. The thunder rolled on and on.
It was a most disconcerting feeling, hanging in the midst of nothing. There was no uprush of air
as in falling down a shaft. He felt somewhat as Alice must have felt on her leisurely fall down the
rabbit-hole, except that his senses gave him no clear information as to what was happening. He
could not even guess how fast it was happening.
Then something hard smacked his soles. He almost fell. The impact was about as strong as that
resulting from a two-foot fall. As he staggered by he hit his shin on something. He said "Ouch!"
His retinas cleared. He was standing in the depression caused by the drop of a roughly circular
piece of pavement.
The rain was coming down hard, now. He climbed out of the pit and ran under the portico of the
Pantheon. It was so dark that the lights in the building ought to have been switched on. They
were not.
Padway saw something curious: the red brick of the rotunda was covered by slabs of marble
facing. That, he thought, was one of the restoration jobs that Tancredi had been complaining
about.
Padway's eyes glided indifferently over the nearest of the loafers. They switched back again
sharply. The man, instead of coat and pants, was wearing a dirty white woolen tunic.
It was odd. But if the man wanted to wear such a getup, it was none of Padway's business.
The gloom was brightening a little. Now Padway's eyes began to dance from person to person.
They were all wearing tunics. Some had come under the portico to get out of the rain. These also
wore tunics, sometimes with poncho-like cloaks over them.
A few of them stared at Padway without much curiosity. He and they were still staring when the
shower let up a few minutes later. Padway knew fear.
The tunics alone would not have frightened him. A single incongruous fact might have a rational if
recondite explanation. But everywhere he looked more of these facts crowded in on him. He
could not concisely notice them all at once. The concrete sidewalk had been replaced by slabs of
slate. There were still buildings around the Piazza, but they were not the same buildings. Over
the lower ones Padway could see that the Senate House and the Ministry of Communications-
both fairly conspicuous objects-were missing. The sounds were different. The honk of taxi horns
was absent. There were no taxis to honk. Instead, two oxcarts creaked slowly and shrilly down
the Via della Minerva.
Padway sniffed. The garlic-and-gasoline aroma of modern Rome had been replaced by a
barnyard-and-backhouse symphony wherein the smell of horse was the strongest and also the
most mentionable motif. Another ingredient was incense, wafting from the door of the Pantheon.