"Philip Jose Farmer - The Gate of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

would soon be captured. There just was not enough forest in which to hide.
They followed the woman around the corner and to the back of the house. She led them inside,
to the kitchen. There was a huge stone fireplace with a log fire and a large iron pot on a tripod
above the fire. A savory odor rose from the simmering contents. Two Hawks had little time to
examine the kitchen; the woman lifted a trapdoor from the middle of the bare wooden floor and
gestured to them to go on down. Two Hawks did not like the idea of placing himself and OтАЩBrien in
a position from which he could not escape. But he either could do that or take to the woods, and he
had already rejected that if something else was offered. He went down a flight of ten steps with the
Irishman close behind him. The trapdoor was shut, and they were in complete darkness.
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Above them came the sound of something scraping across the floor. The woman was hiding the
trapdoor with furniture. Two Hawks took out his flashlight and examined the room. His nose had
already told him that there were strips of garlic and sausage and other food hanging from the
roughly hewn beams above. There was a door close by; he pushed this open and then turned off the
light. Enough light came through several chinks in the log wall of the house above for him to see.
The large chamber was lined with shelves on which sat dust-covered glass jars. These contained
preserved fruits, vegetables, and jellies. On the floor beneath the shelves were piles of junk; stuff
the owner had not been able to throw away or else considered worth repairing some day. One item
that particularly caught his attention was a large wooden mask, broken off at one corner. To
examine it closer, he turned on his flashlight. It portrayed the face of a demon or a monster, painted
in garish scarlet, purple, and a dead-white.
тАЬI donтАЩt like being down here, Lieutenant,тАЭ OтАЩBrien said. He came close to Two Hawks as if he
found comfort in the proximity. Although it was cool in the dark cellar, the Irishman was sweating.
He stank of fear.
Then he said, тАЬThereтАЩs something funny as hell about all this. I meant to ask you, but I thought
maybe youтАЩd think IтАЩd cracked. Did you feel as if you were being, well, sort of twisted. I got a
sickish feeling, just before that German showed up. I thought IтАЩd been hit at first. Then things got
too exciting to think about it. But when we was back in the woods, sitting there, I got the same
feeling. Only not so strong. Just feeling that there was something a lot more wrong than being shot
down and hiding away from the krauts.тАЭ
тАЬYeah, I had the same feeling, too,тАЭ Two Hawks said. тАЬBut I canтАЩt explain it.тАЭ
тАЬI felt like, well, like Old Mother Earth herself had disappeared for a minute,тАЭ OтАЩBrien said.
тАЬHow about that, huh?тАЭ
Two Hawks did not answer. He heard the vehicle approaching down the road, then stop in front
of the house. The motor sounded like an old Model T. He directed the sergeant to help him pile
junk beneath one of the chinks and then stood up on the unstable platform. The hole was only a
little larger than his eye, but it permitted him to see the car and the soldiers getting out of it. It was a
peculiar looking vehicle, perhaps not so much peculiar as old-fashioned. He remembered OтАЩBrienтАЩs
comment when they had first landed about the cars at the head of the ox-drawn wagon train.
Well, Rumania was supposed to be a very backward country, even if it had the largest and most
modern oil refineries in Europe. And the soldiers certainly were not members of the Wehrmacht.
On the other hand, their uniforms did not resemble anything in the illustrations he had seen during
his briefing in Tobruk. The officer wore a shiny steel helmet shaped to look like a wolfтАЩs head.
There were even two steel ears. His knee-length jacket was a green-gray, but the collar had a strip
of grayish animal fur sewed to it. There was an enormous gold-braided epaulette on each shoulder
and a triple row of large shiny yellow buttons down the front of his jacket. His trousers were
skintight, crimson, and had the head of a black bull on each leg just above the knees. He wore a
broad leather belt with a holster. A strange-looking pistol was in his hand; he gestured with it while
giving orders to his men in a Slavic-sounding speech. He turned and revealed that he was also
wearing a sword in a scabbard on his left side. Shiny black calf-length boots completed his