"Gordon R. Dickson - Time Storm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

use. The sky-high wall of haze that was the time change line, holding its position just outside of
Samuelson's town, now to the left and behind us, grew smaller as I drove the van away from there.
In a car we were pretty safe, according to what I had learned so far. These time lines were like
lengths of rod, rolling across the landscape; but as I say, I had yet to
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TIME STORM
encounter any that seemed to travel at more than thirty miles an hour. It was not hard to get away
from them as long as you could stick to a road.
I had been keeping my eyes open for something in the way of an aH-terrain vehicle, but with
adequate speed. Something like a Land Rover that could make good time on the roads but could also
cut across open country, if necessary. But so far I had not found anything.
I became aware that the engine of the van was roaring furiously under the hood. I was belting us
along the empty asphalt road at nearly seventy miles an hour. There was no need for anything like
that It was both safer and easier on the gas consumption to travel at about forty or forty-five;
and now and then gas was not easily available, just when the tank ran low. It was true I had four
spare five-gallon cans-full* lashed to the luggage carrier on the van's roof. But that was for
real emergencies.
Besides, none of the three of us had anything that urgent to run toтАФ┬╗or away from. I throttled
down to forty mOes an hour, wondering how I had let my speed creep up in the first place.
Hum, of course, I realized why. I had been letting Samudson's feelings get to me. Why should I cry
for hint? He was as crazy from the loss of his family as the girl wasтАФor Sunday. But he had really
wanted us to stay the night, hi that huge house of his from which his family had disappeared; and
it would have been a kindness to him if we had stayed. Only, I could not take the chance. Sometime
in the night he might change suddenly from the man who was desperate for company to a man who
thought that I, or all of us, had something to do with whatever it was that had taken his people


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away from him.
I could not trust his momentary sanity. Samuelson had talked for a while like a sane man; but he
was still someone sitting in a deserted town, shooting rockets fun of high explosives at cut-size
toys that attacked at regular intervals. No one in that position could be completely sane.
Besides, insanity was part of things, now. Sunday was the definitive example. I could have cut the
leopard's throat, and he would have licked my hand as I was doing it. The girl was in no better
mental condition. Samuelson, like them, was caught in this cosmic joke that had over-
HME STORM 19
'taken the world we knewтАФso he was insane too, by definition. There was no other possibility.
Which of course, I thought, following the idea to its logical conclusion, as I drove into the
increasing twilight, meant that I had to be insane, too. The idea was almost laughable. I felt
perfectly sane. But just as I had not trusted Samuelson, if I were him, or anyone else looking at
me from the outside as I drove across the country with a leopard and a speechless girl for
companions, I would not trust myself. I would have been afraid that there could be a madness hi me
too, that would overtake me sometime, suddenly and without warning. Of course, that was all
nonsense. I put the ridiculous thought out of my head.
5
When the red flush of the sunset above the horizon to our right began to grow narrow and dark, and
stars were dearly visible in the clear sky to the east, I pulled the van off the road into a
comfortable spot under some cot-tonwood trees growing down in a little dip between two hills and