"Effinger, George Alec - Maureen Birnbaum 03 - Maureen Birnbaum at the Looming Awfulness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

"Most?" I go. I shuddered. I really wished he hadn't said "most."

"If you guard my back," he goes, "I'll lead the way." He was so brave! Finally
here was a man I could respect.

I also wasn't crazy about his use of the word "spells." He was introducing at
this late date a severely fantastic element into what had been-- except for the
Saint Graal business, which was no doubt just the nightmare effect of a
late-night pizza or something -- clearly a super-scientific series of
adventures. I explained my objection to Rod.

"I'm dead certain that there's a super-scientific explanation to this, too," he
goes. "We just have to find out what it is. Come on, now."

I wasn't crazy about his use of the term "dead certain," while we're at it.

"I've got a flashlight, Maureen," Rod goes bravely. "A lot of predatory animals
flee bright light."

"Oh yeah," I go. "How many slime-trailing sleepless, slimy, slobbering things do
you know that will run and hide from your Eveready?"

"Okay," he goes, "you've put your finger on the major difficulty of our
expedition here. We're up against the unknown, and we can't predict how
successful our conventional fighting techniques will be. It may be that my
spells and your broadsword ability will avail us naught against the poisonous
entities from beyond the stars. But I ask you, what else can we do?"

I didn't hesitate long let me tell you. "We could wait for help in the morning.
We could consult more learned authorities on campus-- and surely there are a few
paraphysicists who could help us. We could give your roommate up for lost and go
have breakfast in a short while. We could hope that Cthulhu or whoever is
intruding on our peace might just decide to look around and go home. There are
any number of other courses of action beside going up this spiral stairwell."

"Let's climb, anyway," Rod goes. "There isn't much other choice."

"As long as you'll take the first attack from beyond the stars. That will give
me time to scramble back down the stairs. Just kidding, of course."

We did climb nearer and nearer the carillon bells, and nothing more disturbing
interrupted us for a time. After a while, however, the carillon began to sway a
bit in the non-existent breeze, clapping together and making strange, unearthly,
ancient-sounding bell melodies. At the same time, I noticed that pulsating
poisonous patterns were written out on the stone walls in nacreous, glowing
runes that neither Rod nor I could identify, as well as terrible, twisting
pictographs that moved of their own accord. They writhed before us, and we had
no way of knowing how to interpret them.

There were overwhelmingly strong hints of monsters, of gods or creatures from