"Hawke, Simon - Sorcerer 01 - The Reluctant Sorcerer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

A dwarf, he thought (and it was probably fortunate that he only thought this rather than saying it out loud), then he mentally corrected himself when he saw that the man, while very small, was nevertheless perfectly proportioned, which made him not a dwarf, but a midget. A little person, Brewster mentally corrected himself again. They don't like to be called midgets, they like to be called little people.

"My bull!" a new voice suddenly cried out. "What have you done to my prize bull?" A man was running toward them across the field, shaking his fist and, in his other hand, brandishing a very nasty looking pitchfork. He was dressed in a peculiar fashion, tight black breeches and what appeared to be a brown potato sack belted around his waist, with a hole in it for his head and arms. He was wearing high, soft leather moccasins and he had long, shoulder-length hair. For that matter, the little man who'd rescued him was dressed in a peculiar fashion too, thought Brewster. He had on some kind of belted, brown leather jerkin cut in scallops around the hem and sleeves, baggy green trousers tucked into high, laced leather boots, and a large dagger at his waist. Brewster wondered if he hadn't somehow transported himself to some sort of hippie commune in the country. Or perhaps these were circus people. In fact, he wondered, where had he transported himself? He should have been back in the lab, but this most definitely was not his laboratory. He glanced around. It wasn't even London. Something had very definitely gone wrong.

"Mick O'Fallon!" said the farmer as he came running up. "I should have known you'd be at the bottom of this! You and your blasted alchemical mixtures! Now look what you've gone and done! You've killed my bull!" "S'trewth, and I didn't touch your bleedin' bull, Robie McMurphy," the little man said as he got up to a sitting position. "And have a care, or can you not recognize a wizard when you see one?" The farmer's eyes grew wide as he gazed at Brewster. "A wizard!" he exclaimed.

"A master sorcerer, I should think," said Mick, "judgin' by the way he blasted that great, big, foolish bull of yours. You'd best show proper respect, else you're liable to find yourself gettin' some of the same." "Beggin' your pardon. Good Master," said McMurphy, lowering his gaze and dropping to one knee. "I didn't know!" "Dropped right out of the sky, he did," said Mick, "in some kind of magic chariot. Faith, and didn't I see it myself?" Brewster blinked at them with confusion. "Where am I?" he asked, looking around him. The countryside didn't look familiar, but then again, he hadn't spent much time outside of London. Then his gaze fell, on the blasted, smoldering wreckage of his time machine. "Oh, no! Ruined! It's absolutely ruined!" "Your stupid, bloody bull attacked his magic chariot," Mick said to the farmer, by way of explanation.

McMurphy looked chagrined. More than that, he suddenly looked terrified. "Forgive me. Good Master!" he pleaded. "I beg of you, don't punish me! I shall make amends, somehow, L swear it!" Brewster wasn't paying very close attention. Now that the fireworks were over, it was dawning on him that he must have seriously miscalculated. Somehow, he had transported himself right out of the city and, worse still, the machine had been utterly destroyed. Now he would have to find out exactly where he was and call Pamela to come and pick him up. He sighed heavily. She was bound to be very much annoyed. He'd have to ask these people if he could use a telephone.

Then it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't even thanked the little man for pulling him out of the time machine before it exploded and thereby saving his life. He turned back toward him, somewhat sheepishly.

"I'm sorry," he said to the little man, "I'm forgetting my manners. I'm very grateful for your help. The door was stuck and if you hadn't forced it open..." He swallowed nervously as he considered his narrow escape. "Allow me to introduce myself. The name is Brcwster. Dr. Marvin Brewster. But my friends just call me Doc." He held out his hand.

The little -man reached out and clasped him by the forearm, rather than the hand. Brewster assumed this was some sort of new counterculture handshake and he politely did the same.

"Honored to be makin' your acquaintance, Brewster Doc," the little man said. "As it happens, I do a bit of brewin' on the side myself, y'know. Of course, I'm strictly a layman, a dabbler, as it were. I am a craftsman, by trade, an armorer." "You don't say," said Brewster absently. "Listen, do you mind if I use your phone? I'll make it collect, but I need to call London." The little man frowned. "Fone?" he said quizzically. He shook his head. "Faith, and I have no such thing, I fear. And I know of no Lunden hereabouts." Now it was Brewster's turn to frown. "You don't know London?" "I know of no one by that name. Good Brewster," Mick replied.

"No, no, I mean the city," Brewster said. "London, the city." The little man and the farmer exchanged puzzled glances. "I know of no such city," said Mick. "Is it very far?" "I don't know," Brewster replied. "I'm not quite sure where I am, you see. I seem to have miscalculated, somehow. What is this place?" "My farm," McMurphy said, trying to be helpful.

"No, no, I mean what town' said Brewster.

" 'Town'?" McMurphy said. He looked around, uncertainly. "But.. .there is no town here, Good Master. The nearest village would be Brigand's Roost, I suppose." "Brigand's Roost?" Brewster frowned again. He had never even heard of it.

"Well," said McMurphy, "until the brigands came, it used to be called Turkey's Roost, but the brigands shot most of the turkeys and ate them." Brewster was having some difficulty following the conversation. " 'Brigands'^. What do you mean, 'brigands'?" "He means Black Shannon's brigands," Mick said. "They used to live in the forest, and then they were called the Forest Brigands, only Shannon decided the forest lacked certain amenities, so they took over Turkey's Roost, which is now called Brigand's Roost, you see." Brewster didn't see at all. "What, you mean they actually took over a town?" "Only a small village, really," said Mick, "and not much of one, at that." "What are they, some sort of motorcycle gang?" asked Brewster.

McMurphy and Mick both looked blank. Clearly, they had no idea what he was talking about.

Brewster began to have an unsettling feeling about all this. They didn't know about London, they didn't seem to have telephones or know what motorcycles were, they had brigands, and the clothing they were wearing was either very hip or very out-of-date.

"What.. .year is this?" asked Brewster.

They both looked blank again. They exchanged puzzled glances. McMurphy looked at Mick and shrugged. Mick shook his head.

"Forgive me, Brewster," Mick said, "I don't understand." "Oh, boy," said Brewster.

Mick stiffened and drew himself up to his full height, all three feet of it. "I am no boy, Brewster," he said with affronted dignity. "I am one of the little people." "What?" said Brewster. "Oh. No, I'm sorry, you misunderstood. I know you are a little person, I was merely saying 'Oh, boy' as an expression." "An expression of what?" asked Mick. "Dismay, I think," Brewster replied. The full import of what had happened to him was only beginning to register. (It would take a while yet, but let's bring him along slowly, shall we? He's a nice enough fella, even if he doesn't have a lot of street smarts, and we don't want to give it to him all at once.) Now let me think, he thought, and proceeded to do just that.

He had set the machine to take him back ten minutes into the past, at the exact same location from which he had departed. Obviously, this was not the exact same location from which he had departed, so it stood to reason that it probably wasn't ten minutes in the past, either.

The reason he had crashed, he deduced, was that he had been located on the top floor of the headquarters building of EnGulfCo International when he had left. He had arrived at some point in space and time where that building did not exist. Ergo, he'd had a bit of a drop. Fortunately, he happened to arrive over a mountain, otherwise, the drop would have been a great deal more significant. Fortunately, also, that the steel torus had kept the machine from tumbling, otherwise the tanks might have ruptured on the way down the mountain slope and the results would have been fatal. And it was fortunate that the little man named Mick had been there to force the door loose, but right about there, the few fortunate things about this entire episode ended.

He had clearly traveled a lot further back into the past than he'd intended. He wasn't quite sure how. In the initial experiments he had conducted with Bugs, everything seemed to have worked perfectly. But then, for all he knew, Bugs had also traveled back further into the past than he'd thought. The encouraging thing was that Bugs had made it back, and in one piece. The discouraging thing was that unlike Bugs, Brewster no longer had a ride. Unless...

There was still that first time machine, the one that had departed on a one-way trip, thanks to the faulty switch in the auto-return module. The settings on both machines had been the same. Therefore, it stood to reason that the first machine was here, as well. Wherever "here" was. At least, Brewster earnestly hoped that was the case; otherwise, he was stuck.

Brewster approached the still-smoking wreckage of what used to be his time machine and stared at it disconsolately.

"I am truly sorry about your chariot, Good Brewster," said McMurphy uneasily. "If there is any way that I can make amends, you have but to ask and I shall do it, if 'tis within my power." "Hmmm," said Brewster. "Perhaps there is. You wouldn't happen to have seen another, uh, chariot like that around here anywhere, would you?" McMurphy frowned. "I do not think so. Good Master. What did it look like?" "Oh, yes, of course, you didn't really see it, did you?" Brewster said. He turned to Mick. "K>" got a good look at it, though, didn't you? Would you recognize one that was just like it if you saw it?" "Aye, that I would," said Mick confidently.