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

better than your exclusive health club seems to have done for you. No offense,
Bitsy, of course I'm not being catty.

"Look, there !" Rod goes. He was like freaking out on me.

I stared where he was pointing and I couldn't see a goddamn thing. He dragged
his bike across the road, and I followed. When I got closer, I saw why he was so
excited. He'd discovered a small crack in the rock that proved to be the
entrance to a noxious, noisome, unspeakable cavern.

Lord only knows how many thousands of people had passed right by that place, but
it took the eagle eye of Rod Marquand to spot the significant opening. I knew
there was nothing in the Yale student guide to New Haven about noxious, noisome,
unspeakable caves. Unspeakable rival schools, maybe, but nothing about caves.

"We're getting close," he goes." I can feel it."

It was dark, and there were webby things hanging down in my face. "It sure is
unspeakable in here," I go. "Indescribable, too."

"Don't talk, Maureen," he goes. "Save your energy for It."

"What is this It we're going to be going up against?" I go. "Can you give me an
idea?"

Rod's voice came from further into the cavern, whose floor had begun to slope
upward. "Perhaps Great Cthulhu himself. There's no way of knowing. I hope you
have a tight grasp on your sanity."

"I've got a tight grasp on Old Betsy," I go. "She's always been enough for me so
far."

"You've never been confronted by one of the Slobbering Obscene before."

"Except last night," I go, reminding him. He did not answer. That bothered me,
too.

I could not see Rod, so I trudged along behind him. It had become stiflingly
warm inside the cave, and I unzipped the ski jacket. I wanted to drop the jacket
altogether, because I could better wield my sword without it, but I thought,
"Hey. What if we run into the Ice Abomination from the Moons of Pluto?" Better
safe than sorry is the motto of our wing of the Bimbaum clan, you know.

Ahead of me I heard Rod go "Courane? Is that you?" There was an awful moment of
silence, and then he goes, "My God, Sandy! What's happened to you?"

I go, "Oh boy, here we go. Get yourself ready for Interstellar Pudding
Monsters."

In a marvelous testimony to my innate courage and like sheer, overwhelming