"John DeChancie - Skyway 2 - Red Limit Freeway" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dechancie John)

before us had been raised on local farms.
Lori came over and shouted in my ear. "Winnie wants to go outside. Says she can find something to eat."
"Here?" I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. "Well, okay, but I should go with you."
"We'll be fine. You go ahead and eat, I'm not very hungry."
"How's your head? Still feeling woozy?"
"Nah, I'm fine."
"Okay, but be careful." I was reluctant to let them go, and briefly considered asking Roland to tail them
and keep an eye (in them, but I knew Lori was fiercely independent for her age, and more and more I
had come to consider Winnie the equal uf un adult human in intelligence and maturity-maybe even more
than equal. Lori could do very well on her own; however, I still wanted her to be checked over by a
competent medic, if one could be found. That was a minor problem. The big one was what the hell to do
with her. With the Laputa either lost or pirated, she had no place to go except to her former foster
parents' home on a planet named Schlagwasser, which lay on Winnie's Itinerary. Unfortunately, Lori had
not been on good terms with her foster parents, and had run away.
But it wasn't certain that the Laputa had been lost. Good for Lori ... maybe ... but not good for me. At
least three groups of people and beings aboard that strange ship-animal wanted my blood. In regard to
the alien party, that could be taken quite literally. The Reticulans practiced ritual hunting in bands known
as Snatchgangs, and dispatched their captured quarry by ceremonial vivisection. If Corey Wilkes, their
human ally, had survived, he'd still be teamed with the Rikkis to get the Roadmap from me. And then
there was the Laputa's master, Captain Pendergast, who had been in cahoots with Wilkes and Darla's
father, the late Dr. Van Wyck Vance, in a scheme to run antigeronic drugs into the Outworlds. To those
who wanted to keep these Consolidated Outworlds isolated from Ten-an Maze and independent of the
Authority, the Roadmap represented a threat. Doubtless Pendergast viewed it as such, but he might yet
be unaware of Wilkes' betrayal; Wilkes wanted the map to give to the Authority in return for, among
other things, amnesty for his part in the drug operation. Pendergast was not alone in his desire for a free
Outworlds. He most likely shared it with every inhabitant of this maze. After all, everyone here had taken
a desperate gamble in shooting a potluck portal to get here. There was a way back to Terran Maze by
Skyway. Problem was, it went through Reticulan Maze, where few humans, or any rational human who
wanted to keep his skin intact, dared to go. But it was a fair possibility that a bold or foolish few had
braved the trip back and had lived to tell of what was on the other side of the potluck portal on Seven
Suns Interchange, though that might be only one of several portals leading into the Outworlds.
The upshot: if the Laputa had made it, the problem of what to do with Lori would evaporate, but I just
might, too. Problems, problems.
What would the Teleologists John, Susan, and Rolanddo now? That would take priority on the agenda,
after we had eaten.
The food was great-ribs spicy and done just right, the game hen crispy-skinned and juicy inside. The
bread was golden brown with a thick crust, flaky and tender. And the vegetables were there to pass the
time between bouts of wolfing down the entrees, with draft after draft of beer to sluice it all down the
pipes. If this was bar food, I wondered what delights the dining room offered. The waitress kept bringing
side dishes, compliments of the house, she said. Along with free rounds of beer came bowls of sliced
pickled beets, onions, pickled eggs and cucumbers, multi-bean salad, assorted condiments, and piles of
bread and butter.
On the down side, we were getting stared at. It wasn't our table manners; in that regard we fit right in.
Word had spread, I thought, as to who I was-which immediately brought to mind the question of just
who the hell I was. Jake McGraw, Olympian god-type, who came back through time to bring the secret
of the Roadbuilders to mankind? Just a man around whom a cloud of wild rumors had settled? Or was I
being confused with someone else?
No, the latter two possibilities were out; the Black Cube, the paradox of Darla, and other realities spoke
volumes about the rumors being true. Some of them, anyway. That left the Olympian hero. Anybody got
a fig leaf?