"Diane Duane - Feline Wizards 2 - Majesty's Wizardly Service" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

were, were stretching thinner and thinner under the book's weight,
cutting into his hands like cheesewire and leaving red marks. He had
to stop and transfer the bag from right hand to left, left hand to
right, as he went up the stairs, hauling himself along by the chipped
blue-painted handrail. When he finally reached the platform, Patel
set the bag down gratefully on the concrete with a grunt, and rubbed
his hands, looking up at the red LEDs of the train status sign to see
when the next one would be along. I, the sign said, BANK, 2 minutes.

He leaned against the wall of the glass-sided station-platform
shelter, out of reach of the light chill east wind, and put the bag
down at his feet, sighing and gazing out over the bottom half of the
Isle of Dogs.
Mostly what Patel was looking at, under the morning's featureless
overcast sky, was a vast construction site: the new tunnels for the
extension of the Jubilee Line of the Underground were being driven
through here, amid a welter of orange-painted cranes, lifters and
mechanical digging machines with exotic foreign names, all of which
made it almost impossible to see Island Gardens on the far side of
the construction.

Patel sighed and thought about the morning's class schedule. This was
his second year of a putative three years at London Guildhall
University, up in the City. He was well on his way toward a degree in
mathematics with business applications, though what good that was
really going to do him, at the end of the day, he wasn't certain.
There would be time to start worrying about jobhunting, though, next
year. Right now, Patel was doing well enough, his student grant was
safe, and whatever attention he wasn't spending on his studies was
mostly directed toward making sure he had enough money to get by.
Though at least he didn't have to worry about rent as yet -- courtesy
of his folks -- there were other serious matters at hand. Clothes ...
textbooks ... partying.

From down the track came a demure hum and a thrum of rails as the
little three-car red-and-blue Docklands train slid toward the
station. Patel picked up the book in his arms -- he had had enough of
the bag's bloody handles -- satisfied that at least this would be the
last time he would have to carry the huge godawful thing anywhere.
One of the jewelry students, of all people, had seen the For Sale ad
on Patel's Web page, and had decided that the metallurgical
information in the book would make it more than worth the twenty quid
that Patel was asking for it. For his own part, Patel was glad enough
to let it go. He had bought the book originally for its mathematical
and statistical content, and found to his annoyance within about a
month of starting his second semester that it was more technical than
he needed for the courses he was taking, which by and large did not
involve metallurgy or engineering. He had put the book aside, and
after that, most of the use it had seen involved Patel's mother using
it to press flowers.