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

ONE

At just before 5:00 p.m. on a weekday, the upper track level of Grand
Central Terminal looks much as it does at any other time of day: a
striped gray landscape of long concrete islands stretching away from
you into a dry, iron-smelling night, under the relentless fluorescent
glow of the long lines of overhead lighting. Much of the view across
the landscape will be occluded by the nine Metro-North trains whose
business it is to be there at that time, and by the rush and flow of
commuters through the many doors leading from the echoing Main
Concourse to the twelve accessible platforms' near ends. The
commuters' thousands of voices on the platforms and out in the
Concourse mingle into a restless undecipherable roar, above which the
amplified voice of the station announcer desperately attempts to
rise, reciting the cyclic poetry of the hour: " ... now boarding, the
five oh two departure of Metro-North train number nine five three,
stopping at One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street, Scarsdale,
Hartsdale, White Plains, North White Plains, Valhalla, Hawthorne,
Pleasantville, Giappaqua ... " And over it all, effortlessly drowning
everything out, comes the massive basso B-flat bong of the Accurist
clock, echoing out there under the blue-painted backwards heaven, two
hundred feet above the terrazzo floor.

Down on the tracks, even that huge note falls somewhat muted, having
as it does to fight with the more immediate roar and thunder of the
electric diesel locomotives, clearing their throats and getting ready
to go. By now Rhiow knew them all better than any trainspotter, knew
every engine by name and voice and (in a few specialized cases) by
temperament ... for she saw them every day in the line of work. Right
now they were all behaving themselves, which was just as well: she
had other work in hand. It was no work that any of the other users of
the Terminal would have noticed -- not that the rushing commuters
would in any case have paid much attention to a small black cat, a
patchy-black-and-white one, and a big gray tabby sitting down in the
relative dimness at the near end of Adams Platform ... even if the
cats hadn't been invisible.

Bong, said the clock again. Rhiow sighed and looked up at the
elliptical multicolored shimmer of the worldgate matrix which hung in
the air before them, the colors that presently ran through its warp
and woof indicating a waiting state, no patency, no pending transits.
Normally this particular gate resided between tracks Twenty-Three and
Twenty-Four at the end of Platform K; but for today's session they
had untied the hyperstrings holding it in that spot, and relocated
the gate temporarily on Adams Platform. This lay between the Waldorf
Yard and the Back Yard, away off to the right of Tower C, the engine
inspection pit, and the power substation: it was the easternmost
platform on the upper level, and well away from the routine trains
and the commuters ... though not from their noise. Rhiow glanced over