"Linda Evans - Time Scout 2 - Wages of Sin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Linda)

little girl said very distinctly, "Yuck." Lupus wasn't certain just exactly
what the word meant, but the look on her face was clear enough. Even the older
men were giving the sick boys a wide berth. Lupus was pressed into the corner
with the sick youngsters, ignored by everyone except the boy who clung to his
arm and groaned.
Then the air began to groan:
It wasn't an audible sound, but it was exactly like the painful buzzing in
his skull the last time he'd been close to this warehouse. Lupus swallowed a
few times and tried to find the source of the noise that wasn't exactly a
noise. A hush fell over the crowd, punctuated messily by the sounds of
wretchedly ill boys and a few murmured words of encouragement from their
slaves. Lupus glanced at a blank stretch of wall, wondering yet again why
everyone had crowded into this particular warehouse
The wall began to shimmer. Colors scintillated wildly through the entire
rainbow. Lupus gasped aloud, then controlled his involuntary reaction. A quick
glance showed him that no one had noticed the sweat that had started on his
brow. That was a relief, but it still took all his courage to continue looking
at the pulsing spot on the wall. Captivated by the sight, he couldn't look
away, not even when a dark hole appeared in the scintillating, circular
rainbows, his hindbrain whispering to run! The hole widened rapidly until it
had swallowed half the warehouse wall. Lupus fought back once more the
instinct to run, then swallowed instead and whispered softly, "Great war-god
Mars, lend me a bit of your confidence, please."
People started stepping into it.
They flew away so fast, it was as though they'd been catapulted by a great
war machine. Someone took the other arm of the boy Lupus was "helping" and
pulled him toward the gaping hole in the wall. Lupus wanted to stand rock-
still, terrified of that black maw that swallowed people whole down its
gullet. Then, thinking of vengeance and his carefully sharpened gladius, he
drew a deep breath for courage and moved forward in the midst of the half-
dozen boys who were manfully struggling to overcome their illness. Lupus
hesitated on the brink, sweating and terrified-
Then squeezed shut both eyes and stepped forward.
He was falling ...
 Mithras! Mars! Save me
He went to his knees against something rough and metallic. Lupus opened his
eyes and found himself kneeling on a metal gridwork. The boy who had gone
through with him was vomiting again. Men hauling baggage stumbled past them,
struggling to get around. Lupus hauled the kid to his feet and dragged him in
the direction the others had taken, down a broad, gridwork ramp. Chaos reigned
at the bottom, where several other of the boys were still holding up the line,
vomiting piteously all over a young woman in the most outlandish clothing
Lupus had ever seen. Everyone in line was trying to slide some sort of flat,
stiff vellum chip into a boxlike device, but the boys were making a mess of
the entire procedure. The young woman said something that sounded exasperated
and disgusted and glanced the other way
Lupus, who had no flat, stiff vellum chip to insert into the device,
slipped quietly past and fled for the nearest concealment: a curtain of
hanging vines and flowering shrubs that screened a private portico. Panting
slightly and cursing the fear-borne adrenalin that poured through his veins