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

they had come from another world, what Kickaha called a pocket universe. That
is, an artificial continuum, what the science-fiction movies called the fourth
dimension, something like that.
 The Lords, as they called themselves, claimed to have made Earth. Not
only that, the sun, the other planets, the stars-which weren't really stars,
they just looked like they were-the whole damn universe.

In fact, they claimed to have created the ancestors of all Earth people
in laboratories.

Not only that-it made his brain bob up and down, like a cork on an ocean
wave-there were many artificial pocket universes. They'd been constructed to
have different physical laws than those on Earth's universe.

Apparently, some ten thousand or so years ago, the Lords had split. Each
had gone off to his or her own little world to rule it. And they'd become
enemies, out to get each other's ass.

Which explained why Urthona and Ore, Anana's own uncles, had tried to
kill her and each other.

Then there was Kickaha. He'd been born Paul Janus Finnegan in 1918 in
some small town in Indiana. After World War II he'd gone to the University of
Indiana as a freshman, but before a year was up he was involved with the
Lords. He'd first lived on a peculiar world he called the World of Tiers.
There he'd gotten the name of Kickaha from a tribe of Indians that lived on
one level of the planet, which seemed to be constructed like the tower of
babel or the leaning tower of Pisa. Or whatever. Indians? Yes, because the
Lord of that world, Jadawin, had populated various levels with people he'd
abducted from Earth.

It was very confusing. Jadawin hadn't always lived on the home planet of
the Lords or in his own private cosmos. For a while he'd been a citizen of
Earth, and he hadn't even known it because of amnesia. Then... to hell with
it. It made McKay's head ache to think about it. But some day, when there was
time enough, if he lived long enough, he'd get it all straightened out. If he
wasn't completely nuts before then.

CHAPTER FOUR

KlCKAHA SAID, "I'm a Hoosier appleknocker, Angus. So I'm going to get us
some fresh fruit. But I need your help. We can't get close because of those
tentacles. However, the tree has one weak point in its defense. Like a lot of
people, it can't keep its mouth shut.

"So, I'm going to shoot an arrow into its mouth. It may not kill it, but
it's going to hurt it. Hopefully, the impact will knock it over. This bow
packs a hell of a wallop. As soon as the thing's hit, you run up and throw
this axe at a branch. Try to hit a cluster of apples if you can. Then I'll
decoy it away from the apples on the ground."