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

gutsiness, I did not hesitate. I hurried along until I beheld the excruciating,
festering creature that Rod's friend had become.

"It must have been the contact with the Great Old Ones," Rod goes in a frantic,
fearful voice.

Sandy had become a gnarled, aged man, lurching and clutching blindly in the
flickering greenish glow emanating from some sort of well in the midst of the
cavern. His hair had turned white and most of it had kind of fallen out, you
know? And he drooled a weird substance that was truly, truly ichorous. He could
barely be called human anymore, and if it were up to me, I wouldn't have. Yet,
after all, he was still in some way connected to his elder self -Rod's companion
and roommate.

"I can't stand it!" Rod goes. "Maureen, beware! That which caused this change in
Courane lies nearby, and you risk the soundness of your mind should you chance
to make contact with it!" I thought Rod's speech had taken a sharp turn into the
melodramatic, but I didn't say anything about that.

Around Sandy floated odd shapes -- illusions, lesser monsters, or
thought-projected weapons I could not tell. They looked like . . . well, apart
from being indescribable, they looked like drab-colored, hovering paisleys.

"Paisleys, Rod!" I go. "Sandy is trying to tell us something!"

"Tell us something? How? And what is he trying to say?"

"I don't know!" I go. Like I was putting most of my attention on what had once
been your average college student. I didn't want to hurt Sandy, but I knew that
I might have to, in order to like save our lives. I concentrated my attack on
the paisleys. There were red paisleys, blue ones, and green ones. That cavern
looked like an explosion in the Land's End tie factory.

I learned very quickly that when I whacked a floating paisley, it became two
small floating paisleys. Something told me that it would be like ever so harmful
to let one of them touch us. I backed away a little more. The Sandy-creature
took a step forward, and the paisleys advanced with him.

"Be careful!" Rod goes helpfully. "He's trying to cut us off from the way out!"

I'd already noticed that, but then, of course, I'm a fierce fighting-person,
well-schooled in hand-to-hand combat, and therefore much better informed than
Rod in such warlike mysteries as strategy and tactics. Instead of slashing at
the nearest paisley, I just poked it a little. Just to see what happened.

It exploded. Into about a thousand micro-paisleys. "Jeez," I go. I was starting
to be troubled.

"He's humming!" Rod goes, all excited. "He's humming some spell!"