"LOSTCITY" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howard Joseph)

Joseph H2O2ward

THE CITY THAT LOST ITS WAY




1

The city had been humming for ten thousand years. Yet its tune had
changed over the millennia. The quiet methodical drone of an efficient
piece of machinery had stumbled so long ago, then become a cry.
The city was crazy with boredom and loneliness. It had been betrayed;
and its streets remained empty of traffic. It did not know who it was,
though that knowledge lay within it.
Somewhere there was a key that would unlock the secret. But the key
was hidden; and the city couldn't find it. And the city cried for
companionship.
The city could not remember nor see where it was; but it found a peep
hole out of its limbo and searched the planets of nearby stars for
intelligent life. It found none. It searched farther out and located some;
but did not like the shape and thoughts of the flesh things it saw.
It searched even farther out; and discovered a world whose
inhabitants were squat and fatty compared to the people it thought it
remembered. It studied them and their culture while looking for a way to
capture some.
As it whiled away the last few years of its isolation, it became
addicted to televised detective stories, and thought it found in them a
sure plan to get help. The city was crazy, not mean crazy; but dangerous
none-the-less.
The city was not stupid. Though it couldn't find an exit from its
wilderness, it did work out a link to the planet of squat and fatty
people.
It could not reach out and grab somebody; its manipulative ability at
that distance was nil. It could invite one or more to come.
It found a wall, a great big long one for this culture, though not
the gigantic thing that ran through a continent which broadcast few
mystery stories. This was something to which it could anchor with relative
ease, even so far out. It made a door at the bottom of that wall, not
quite straight upright, a bit above the level of the walk, but a
creditable door anyway.
The door was oak and massive, like those in many detective stories.


Little dust devils, kicked up by the gusting post-dawn wind, swirled
and scattered the litter as Herbert Wilson Mayer walked along the dirty
gray street. The concrete wall to his right, defaced with constantly
changing graffiti, supported a once-proud railway that now transported
dilapidated commuter cars and squeaking, poorly maintained freight stock.