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

was in the shape of a squashed silver sphere melded to a blue
pyramid. A third, lying some distance off the road, was a
free-form aggregation of butterfly-wing shapes. There were
others less easy to describe. Needless to say, we didn't have a
clue as to what they were or what functions they served, if
any. I suspected that some of them weren't buildings, exactly.
Sculpture? Possibly. Machines? Maybe.

The Emerald City was different. There was a fanciful qual-
ity to it. Its lines were graceful and romantic, belying its bulk.
It imparted a sense of solidity, though; it was big enough to
contain a city, and if it truly were a fortress, a castle, it looked
the part, high ramparts braced against the wind. It looked to
have been carved out of a single uniform block of material.
No seams, no joints.

It was a castle, but it was unlike anything you'd see in
history books. An alien hand had drawn the blueprints; I was
willing to bet on that.

Sam asked, "What was that about an entrance at the foot of
the mountain?"

"That's what the man said."

But what was there was simply the end of the the road. The
Skyway, that maze of interstellar road that stretched through-
out the galaxy, terminated at the base of the citadel in front of
a stand of short purplish trees. Road's end. We had come a
long way.

21

22 John DeChancie PARADOX ALLEY 23

I braked.

"Whoa!" Sam yelled. "What's this?"

The juncture of road and hillside parted, the edge of the hill
rising like a hiked skirt, scrubby trees stitched to the hem. It
stopped just high enough to admit the truck, forming an arch
that revealed the mouth of a tunnel. The road continued
through.

"What do you think of that, Sam?" I asked.

"Nifty."

"Shall we drive on in?"