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

forward, in what I took to be a reassuring gesture, when I first tried to speak to him. Then he
came toward me, speaking some kind of Scanduuvian-sounding gibberish in a friendly voice, the axe
hung on his shoulder as if he had forgotten it was there.
It was when I began to get worried about the steady way he was coming on and warned him back with
the rifle, that I recognized suddenly that, apparently, as far as he was concerned, I was carrying
nothing more man a dub. For a second I was merer/ paralyzed by the enormity of that insight. Then,
before I could bring myself to shoot Urn after all in self-defense, I had the idea of trying to
pick op the bow with my free hand. As an idea, it was a good oneтАФbut the minute he saw the bow in
my hand he acted; and to this day, I*m not sure exactly how he did it
He reached back at belt-level and jerked forward on the handle-end of the axe. It came off his
shoulderтАФ
6 TIME STORM
spinning, back, around, under his arm, up !n the air and over, and came down, incredibly, with the
end of its handle into his fist and die blade edge forward. Then he threw it
I saw it come whirling toward me, ducked instinctively and ran. I heard it thunk into a tree
somewhere behind me; but by then I was into the cover of the woods, and he did not follow.
Five days later I was where die twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul bad beenтАФand they looked as
if they had been abandoned for a hundred years after a bombing raid that had nearly leveled them.
But I found the panel truck there, and it started when I turned its key. There was gas in the
filling station pumps, though I had to rig up a little kerosene generator I liberated from a
sporting goods store, in order to pump some of ft into the tank of the truck, and I headed south
along U*S. 3SW. Then came Sunday. Then came the girt...
I was almost to the far end of the mistwaE now, although to the left of the road die haze was less
than a hundred yards from the roadway; and little stinging sprays of everything from dust to fine
gravel were beginning to pepper the left side of the panel, including my own bnd and shoulder
where the window on that side was not rolled up. But I had no time to roll it up now. I kept
pushing the gas pedal through the floor, and suddenly we whipped past the end of the wall of mist,
and I could see open country clear to the summer horizon.
Sweating, I eased back on the gas, let use truck roll to a stop, and half-turned it across die
road so I could look behind us.
Back where we had been, seconds before, die mist had already crossed die road and was moving on
into die fields that bad been on die road's far aide. They were ceasing to be there as it
passedтАФas die road itself had already ceased to be, and die farm land on the near side of the
road. Where die grain had rippled in die wind, there was now wild, grassy hillsideтАФopen country
sparsely interspersed with a few chimps of bees, rising to a bluff, a crown of land, less than a
quarter of a mile off, looking so close I could reach out and touch it There was not a breath of
wind stirring.
I put die panel back in gear again and drove off. After a while die road swung in a gentle curve
toward a small
TIME STORM 7
Mown that looked as normal as apple pie, as if no mistwall had ever passed through it It could be.
of course. My heart began to pound a little with hope of running into someone sane I could talk
with, about everything that had happened since that apparent heart attack of mine in die cabin.
But when I drove into Main Street of die town, between die buildings, there was no one in sight;
and die whole place seemed deserted. Hope evaporated into caution. Then I saw what seemed to be a


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