"Philip Jose Farmer - WOT 3 - A Private Cosmos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

point, he could see far over the country because this was the zenith of a 160 mile gentle curve of
a section. His way would be so subtly downhill for eighty miles that he would be almost unaware of
it. Then there would be a river or lake to cross,
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and he would go almost imperceptibly up. To his left, seeming only fifty miles away, but actually
a thousand, was the monolith of Abharhploonta. It towered a hundred thousand feet upward, and on
its top was another land and another monolith. Up there was Dracheland, where Kickaha was known as
Baron Horst von Horstmann. He had not been there for two years, and if he were to return, he would
be a baron without a castle. His wife on that level had decided not to put up with his long
absences and so had divorced him and married his best friend there, the Baron Siegfried von
Listbat. Kickaha had given his castle to the two and had left for the Amerind level, which, of all
levels, he loved the most.
His horses pulling the ground along at a canter, Kickaha watched for signs of enemies. He also
watched the animal life, comprised of those still known on Earth, of those that had died off
there, and of animals from other universes. All of these had been brought into this universe by
the Lord, Wolff, when he was known as Jadawin. A few had been created in the biolabs of the palace
on top of the highest monolith.
There were vast herds of buffalo, the small kind stiH known in North America, and the giants that
had perished some ten thousand years ago on the American plains. The great gray bulks of curving-
tusked mammoths and mastodons bulked in the distance. Some gigantic creatures, their big heads
weighted down with many knobby horns and down-curving teeth projecting from horny lips, browsed on
the grass. Dire wolves, tall as Kicka-ha's chest, trotted along the edge of a buffalo herd and
waited for a calf to stray away from its mother. Further on, Kickaha saw a tan-and-black striped
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body slinking along behind a clump of tall grass and knew that Felis Atrox, the great maneless
nine hundred pound lion that had once roamed the grassy plains of Arizona, was hoping to catch a
mammoth calf away from its mother. Or perhaps it had some faint hopes of killing one of the
multitude of antelope that was grazing nearby.
Above, hawks and buzzards circled. Once, a faint V of ducks passed overhead and a honking floated
down. They were on their way to the rice swamps up in the mountains.
A herd of gawky long-necked creatures, looking like distant cousins of the camel, which they were,
lurched by him. There were several skinny-legged foals with them, and these were what a pack of
dire wolves hoped to pull down if the elders became careless.
Life and the promise of death was everywhere. The air was sweet; not a human being was in sight. A
herd of wild horses galloped off in the distance, led by a magnificent roan stallion. Everywhere
were the beasts of the plains. Kickaha loved it. It was dangerous, but it was exciting, and he
thought of it as his worldтАФhis despite the fact that it had been created and was still owned by
Wolff, the Lord, and he, Kickaha, had been an intruder. But this world was, in a sense, more his
than WolfFs, since he certainly took more advantage of it than Wolff, who usually kept to the
palace on top of the highest monolith.
The fiftieth day, Kickaha came to the Tishquet-moac Great Trade Path. There was no trail in the
customary sense, since the grass was no less dense than the surrounding grass. But every mile of
it was marked by two wooden posts the upper part of which had been carved in the likeness of
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Ishquettlammu, the Tishquetmoac god of commerce and of boundaries. The trail ran for a thousand
miles from the border of the empire of Tishquetmoac, curving over the Great Plains to touch
various semipermanent trading places of the Plains and mountain tribes. Over the trail went huge
wagons of Tishquetmoac goods to exchange for furs, skins, herbs, ivory, bones, captured animals,
and human captives. The trail was treaty-immune from attack; anyone on it was safe in theory, at
least, but if he went outside the narrow path marked off by the carved poles, he was fair prey for