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

Circle Line and District Line platforms. There he would catch the
last leg of his trip, the Tube train to Monument, and meet Sasha at
the coffee shop at Eastcheap and Gracechurch Street: and she would
take this thing off his hands ... And arms, and shoulders, but
particularly the hands, Patel thought, and headed down the stairs,
stepping a little to one side so as not to be trampled by the people
behind him. A direction sign just ahead of him said, Platforms 2 and
3, District and Circle Lines, west.

He headed for the sign, changing the bag again from left hand to
right hand with a slight grimace as he went, and turned the left
corner, toward the Tube platform --

Dark. Why was it dark all of a sudden? Power failure, Patel thought.
Though where's the light behind me? He turned --

The smell was what hit him first. My God, what is that ? Did the
sewer break through in here or something -- But there was no way to
tell. He couldn't see. Patel turned again, took a few hesitant steps
forward. There was something wrong with the ground. It felt mushy --

-- and then suddenly light broke through again, the watery gray
light of the morning he had just left: a few spits and spatters of
rain reached him even here in the tunnel, blown in on that chilly
wind. Some part of Patel's mind had now begun to go round and round
with thoughts like How the heck is there daylight down here, I must
be fifty feet underground and The smell, what is that smell?? -- but
that part of him felt strangely far away, like a mind belonging to
someone else, in the face of what he saw before him. A street, and
the gray day above it, those made sense: buildings pressing close on
either side, yes, and the enamelled metal sign set high in the brick
wall of the building opposite him, saying Coopers' Row, that was fine
too: the math/business building of the University was up past the end
of the Row, in Jewry Street, and he would have been heading there
after meeting Sasha. But there was no pavement to be seen. There was
hardly any road visible, either: it was covered ankle deep in thick
brown mud, the source of the godawful smell. Must have been a sewer
break, said some hopeful part of his mind, steadfastly ignoring the
basic issue of how he was suddenly standing at ground level.

Patel walked forward slowly, trying not to sink into the mud, and
failing -- it came up over the tops of his shoes: boy, these trainers
are going to be a loss after this, and they were only three weeks
old, how am I going to explain this to Mum ... ? Squelch, squelch, he
walked forward, and came to the corner of Cooper's Row and George
Street, looked down toward Great Tower Street in the direction of the
Monument Tube station --

It was not there. The road was lined with old buildings, three- or
four-story brick edifices all crowded together where multi-story