"Philip Jose Farmer - WOT 5 - The Lavalite World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

PHILIP JOSE FARMER - THE LAVALITE WORLD (book V in World of Tiers
series)-1977

(Scanned by: Kislany)

CHAPTER ONE


KICKAHA WAS A quicksilver Proteus.

Few could match his speed in adapting to change. But on Earth and on
other planets of the pocket universes, the hills, mountains, valleys, plains,
the rivers, lakes, and seas, seldom altered. Their permanence of form and
location were taken for granted.

There were small local changes. Floods, earthquakes, avalanches, tidal
waves reshaped the earth. But the effects were, in the time scale of an
individual, in the lifetime of a nation, minute.

A mountain might walk, but the hundreds of thousands of generations
living at its foot would not know it. Only God or a geologist would see its
movements as the dash of a mouse for a hole.

Not here.

Even cocksure, unfazed Kickaha, who could react to change as quickly as
a mirror reflects an image, was nervous. But he wasn't going to let anyone
else know it. To the others he seemed insanely cool. That was because they
were going mad.

CHAPTER TWO

THEY HAD GONE TO sleep during the "night". Kickaha had taken the first
watch. Urthona, Ore, Anana, and McKay had made themselves as comfortable as
they could on the rusty-red tough grass and soon had fallen asleep. Their camp
was at the bottom of a shallow valley ringed by low hills. Grass was the only
vegetation in the valley. The tops of the hills, however, were lined with the
silhouettes of trees. These were about ten feet tall. Though there was little
breeze, they swayed back and forth.

When he had started the watch, he had seen only a few on the hilltops.
As time passed, more and more had appeared. They had ranged themselves beside
the early comers until they were a solid line. There was no telling how many
were on the other side of the hills. What he was sure of was that the trees
were waiting until "dawn". Then, if the humans did not come to them, they
would come down the hills after them.

The sky was a uniform dark red except for a few black slowly floating
shapes. Clouds. The enormous reddish mass, visually six times the size of
Earth's moon, had disappeared from the sky. It would be back, though he didn't