"John DeChancie - Skyway 3 - Paradox Alley" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dechancie John)

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/John%20DeChancie%20-%20Paradox%20Alley.txt

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1

I DON'T KNOW if God wears a beard. I've never had the plea-
sure of meeting Him. Frankly, I hope to delay that happy
occasion for as long as possible.

The individual whose acquaintance I had just made didn't
quite look the part, but I could have been persuaded otherwise
right then. We had come a long wayтАФall the way, it seemed,
to the end of the universe. And here to greet us had been a
surpassingly strange and beautiful creature possessed of a
Serenely transcendent, almost beatific aura. His foppish duds
worked against the God image, though; I couldn't imagine the
Supreme Being going around dressed like a Galactic Emperor
out of some video space opera. And Carl, who stood beside
me wearing a darkly subdued look, his fury temporarily spent,
had seemed mighty sure of the identity of the person whose
lights he had just punched out. I was fairly sure that Carl
didn't think the guy was the King of Creation.

Even so, we had a problem on our hands. Judging from his
patrician bearing and sartorial finery, the person Carl had as-
saulted looked very important. Extremely important. He quite
possibly was in charge of this place, this world to which we
had very recently been shanghaied. He had greeted us warmly,
welcomed us. He'd invited us to lunch. What do we do? Quite
without provocation, we smack the guy in the chops and
knock him out. We were very possibly in deep trouble. Very
possibly our ass was grass. I hoped that our host didn't own a
power mower.

I looked down at the still form of the beingтАФand he ap-
peared for all the world to be a human being of the male
persuasionтАФwho had called himself Prime. He was lying
prone, face in the grass, the back of his head partly hidden

2 John DeChancie

beneath bunched folds of his expansive green cape. The rest
of the garment was spread out to his left over the ground.

I glanced around. No lightning bolts, no clap of doom. I
looked across the valley. No activity immediately apparent in
the vicinity of the immense green crystalline fortress that sur-
mounted the hill on the other side. Could Prime possibly be
alone here? The notion struck me as absurd, but anything was