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

disconcerting to say the least."
John nodded. "To say the very least."
"I can imagine," Chapin said, "but you shouldn't go around stealing things that don't belong to you."
"I stole it, Carl," I said. "They were kidnapped."
Chapin winced, a bit embarrassed. "Oh. Sorry."
"Natural enough mistake," John said good-naturedly. "You couldn't possibly have known."
I had pulled off toward the side of the road and had stopped, waiting for Lori to get squared away and
for everyone to decide to continue the chitchat sitting down and strapped in. Finally, everyone did. We
were short a seat and harness for Chapin, but he wedged himself in behind my seat, squatted on a tool
box, and hung onto a handgrip. Suzie even managed to persuade Lori to bed down again. Lori didn't
protest this time, not much anyway.
Something occurred to me. "Where's Winnie?" I hadn't seen her in hours. I yelled for her.
We heard the sauna stall door open. Winnie came into the cab, rubbing her eyes, scratching her furred
tummy, and giving us all a grimace-smile. "Here! Winnie here!"
"This is Winnie," I said to Chapin, twisting around to him. "Winnie, Carl."
"Hi, Winnie."
"Hi! Hi!"
Chapin held out his hand and Winnie took it, her doublethumbed grip enfolding it warmly.
"Where are you from, Winnie?" Chapin asked her. Winnie extended an arm aft, making a far-off motion.
"Way back!"
Everyone laughed. We had all come a long way.
Winnie sat in Darlas lap, but when she saw that Darla would have some difficulty bearing up under the
weight, she jumped over to John's, hugging him. Winnie's compactness was deceptive; she had a good
deal of bulk on her.
"You've met Carl, then?" John asked Darla.
"Yes, we talked last night. But I didn't get much out of him." She smiled at Carl.
"Neither did I," Susan said, strapping in.
"I notice he made a point to meet the women," I commented.
"Don't mean to be so secretive," Carl said. But he left it at that.
"Here we go," I announced. I goosed the engine and eased the rig forward down the steep incline.
Traffic whizzed by, two roadsters hot-rodding through the curves, braying annoyance at the big lumbering
rig in their way. A little farther down, the curves got easier to handle, and I got a chance to look at the
scenery. The sky was dark with a thick covering of greenish-purple clouds. Here and there, big winged
creatures soared just above treetop level, alighting now and then on lofty branches. No other large
life-forms in sight.
It was all very pretty, and very alien. The road bottomed out and went straight, following a long tree-lined
corridor. Between the massive black tree trunks, undergrowth grew thickly even in the dim light. And a
few lines came to me ...

The woods were lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep ...

If road yarns contained any truth, I had light-years to go. For some unfathomable reason, I had become
the protagonist of the wildest Skyway story yet. I knew only the outline of it; no one had related it in
detail. It was the tale of a man, yours truly, who followed the Skyway clear out to the end. And came
back. But in doing so, I returned paradoxically before I left.
There was more to it. I had come into possession of an alien artifact, the Roadmap, which delineated
clearly and for all time the extent of the Skyway system and revealed a path leading to the lost civilization
of the Roadbuilders and the secrets of their phenomenal technology.
Anawhere did the Skyway lead, if followed out all the way to the "end"?-As if an interconnected road