"Philip Jose Farmer - Riverworld 5 - Gods of Riverworld" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

outside Loga's apartment. At once. Bring your arms!"
Gods of Riverworld / 19
He removed from a cabinet two weapons that he had thought he would never need again. Each had a butt like a pistol's, a
barrel three inches in diameter and a foot long, and at the firing end, a sphere the size of a large apple.
Alice's voice came from her screen.
"Will the horrors never stop?"
"They never do for long," he said. "In this life or that."
Alice's triangular face and large dark eyes were set in that withdrawn expression he disliked so much.
He said harshly, "Snap out of it, Alice!"
"I'll be all right," Alice said. "You know that."
"Nobody is ever all right."
He walked swiftly toward the door. Its sensory device would recognize him but would not open until he had spoken the
code phrase, "Open, O sesame!" in classical Arabic. Alice, in her apartment, would be saying in English, " 'Who are you?'
said the Caterpillar."
The door closed behind him. In the corridor was a large chair made of gray metal and a soft scarlet-dyed material. Burton
sat down on it. The seat and back flowed to fit the contour of his body. He pressed a finger on the black center of a white
disc on the massive left arm of the chair. A long thin metal rod slid up out of the white disc on the right arm. Burton pulled
the rod back, a white light spread out from under the chair, and it rose, stopping two feet above the floor when he eased the
rod into the dead center position. He turned the rod; the chair rotated to face the opposite direction. Using the rod to control
vertical movement, and pressing on the central black spot of the left disc to control speed, he moved the chair down the
corridor.
Presently, floating swiftly past walls displaying animated murals, he joined the others. They hovered in their chairs until
Burton had taken the lead, then followed him. Burton slowed the chair slightly when he entered a huge vertical shaft at the
end of the corridor. With the ease of much practice, he curved the path of the chair up the shaft to the next level and out
into another corridor. A hundred feet beyond the shaft, he halted the chair at the door to Loga's apartment. The chair sank
down onto the floor, and Burton got out. The others were only a few
20 / Philip Jose Fanner
seconds behind him. Babbling, though they were not easily upset, they got out of their chair-vehicles.
The wall extended for three hundred feet from the shaft to an intersecting corridor. Its entire surface displayed a moving
picture in what seemed to be three dimensions. The sky was clear. Far away was a dark mountain range. In the foreground
was a jungle clearing in which was a village of dried-mud huts. Dark Caucasians in the garments worn by Hindus circa 500
B.C. moved among the huts. A slim, dark young man clad only in a loincloth sat under a bo tree. Around him squatted a
dozen men and women, all intently listening to him. He was the historical Buddha, and the scene was not a reconstruction.
It had been filmed by a man or woman, an Ethical agent who had passed for one of them, and whose camera and sound
equipment were concealed in a ring on a finger. At the moment, their conversation was a slight murmur, but a codeword
from a viewer could make it audible. If the viewer did not understand Hindustani, he could use another codeword to switch
the language to Ethical.
Another codeword would make the picture emit the odors abounding near the photographer, though the viewer was usually
better off without these.
Directly in front of Burton was a treestump on which someone had painted a symbol, a green eye inside a pale yellow
pyramid. This had not been in the original film; it marked the entrance to Loga's apartment.
"If he's got the door set for his codeword only, we're screwed," Frigate said. "We'll never get in."
"Somebody got in," Burton said.
"Perhaps," Nur said.
Burton spoke loudly, too loudly, as if he could activate the opening mechanism by force of voice.
"Loga!"
A circular crack ten feet in diameter appeared in the wall. The section moved inward a trifle, then the section became a
wheel and rolled into the wall recess. The scene on it did not fade out but turned with the surface.
"It was set for anyone who wanted to enter!" Alice said.
"Which was not the right thing to do," Burton said.