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

did understand what the `be' was for."
Roland and the logger left. "Well, anyway-"
In another part of the bar, someone fell, or was thrown, over a table.
Fitzgore said, "You were saying, Jake?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. What I was going to ask was-did you ever hear of a portal jump of that distance?"
"Hardly. But who knows?"
"Just what the hell is in this pipe, if I may ask?"
"Cruising weed, we calls it," someone said.
"Cruising weed. I've been inhaling this shit."
"Good idea, that."
"Pretty good shit, actually."
"Have some more beer, Jake," Fitzgore said, sloshing suds into my mug.
"Don't mind if I do, thank you." I relit the pipe with a long kitchen match. "Uh, your buddy there ... he's
got at least fifty kilos on Roland."
"Liam won't hurt him. He's a good man, Jake. Never hurt anyone, so far as I know."
"Well, I guess it's okay, then." I took a deep drag on the pipe. The weed was rather good, in its own
way. Not smooth on the draw, but satisfying. Rather peppery. At any rate, I was cruising along just fine.
"Getting back to the issue at hand," I went on. "My guess is we're talking about millions of kilometers of
road, billions maybe, to get to the big road-the whachmacallit. Red Limit Freeway."
Fitzgore's eyes lit up. "Fine name for it!" Then he shook his head. "Not that much, Jake. It would be a
long trek, surely, but I should think it would depend on the distances covered by each jump along the
Galactic Beltway." He leaned back and hooked his thumbs in his suspenders. "Maybe there's a shortcut
somewhere."
I nodded. "Maybe. Still..." I took the pipe from my mouth and used it to point at one of Winnie's
drawings. "What about the Red Limit Freeway itself? How many metaclusters are there in the universe?"
Fitzgore laughed. "Cosmology's hardly my strong suit. However, I'd venture to say that the count of
galaxies has to be in the billions."
"I've heard the figure of one hundred billion," I said. "Somewhere. Was that galaxies? I dunno. Anyway,
say it's a hundred billion."
"Probably a conservative figure."
"Yeah, but let's say one hundred gigagalaxies. Okay, let's put the average population of a cluster at="
"Don't you mean a metacluster?"
"Right, metacluster. Let's say a thousand galaxies in a metacluster, on the average."
"I see where you're going, Jake. But consider this. Red Limit Freeway is a road back through time, not
necessarily a road that links every large-scale structure in the universe." "Who says it's either?"
"Who's to say it isn't both?" someone put in.
"Good point," I said.
Fitzgore exhaled and wrapped his meaty arms around his chest. "Well, as laymen, I suppose all we can
do is make points and counterpoints, until somebody in a position to know comes along and settles the
matter."
"Or until Roland sobers up," I said. "He seems to know something about this."
"Has he had scientific training?" "Can you answer that, Suzie?"
"Roland knows everything," Susan said. "But, I think he studied political whatzis in school. Political
whatever. Party member, you know."
"Really? Interesting. I take it he changed political stripes somewhere along the way."
"Yup." She giggled. "Or maybe he's a spy. A plant." She giggled again. "Or maybe he's just a plant. A
veggie." This amused her as well. Then, suddenly, she sobered up and said, "Would it be all right for a
lady to smoke a pipe?"
"I beg your pardon," Fitzgore said, taking another pipe from a carved wooden rack and charging it from
the glass humidor. "Rude of me not to have offered. Darla, would you care to-?"