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

out the chill and shouted, "Hey! Anyone here? There's a sick woman who
needs help."
No answer. He walked the tunnel, half a mile or more, he estimated.
"Whew. Really is warm in here."
"Hey! Anyone home?"
The purple light grew brighter as he progressed, though the
temperature didn't increase. The corridor curved sharply to the left. He
followed the turn to the tunnel's sudden opening.
He stepped out.
Before him lay the city, but not his city. Behind him was his exit in
a shiny black wall that went up and on forever. Before him lay the street,
a wide, immaculate boulevard straddling fountains and plazas, flanked by
gigantic dark monoliths whose tops reached dizzyingly into the featureless
violet sky. The street seemed to stretch to infinity, a symphony of
iridescent blues and sparkling greens in this strange light. The fountains
played; but not a living thing moved.
A sigh of wonder broke from his lips. "Where am I?"
A soft, sexless, but well-inflected voice came from everywhere. "I am
the city. Welcome to you and your companion. You have twenty-four hours to
find the key or you will be destroyed. Good hunting."


The Qals had built the city. Throughout the universe they had created
widely and sparsely scattered urbs, both for themselves and others. This
city they had built for themselves.
The archetractor was Nemqal of Kem, the Younger. Intelligent and
creative was Nemqal, but flawed with overweening ambition.
When his workers had finished the project, he did not deliver it to
the qalmasters, as his fathers had done for uncounted rotations of Galaxy
Home. Instead he hid it in a place that only his mathematical skills had
found, a limbo existing outside the coordinates available to the
skipstones that had sprinkled Qal outposts among the stars.
Nemqal bargained for wealth and power with the qalmasters, who spat
upon him and removed his builder's inheritance. He soon disappeared.
Unable to find the city, the qalmasters commissioned another to be
made; and the lost urb passed into the chronicle of Galaxy Home and out of
mind.
Yet the city lived and cried for its people, and grew strange.


A startled Mr. Mayer said, "What?"
"Welcome to you and your companion. You have 23 hours, 59 minutes, 46
seconds to find my key or you will be destroyed. Good hunting."
"Who are you?"
"I am the city. I do not know my name."
"Where am I?"
"In the city, of course."
"But where is this city?"
"I don't know. When you find the key, we will both know."
"Uh, I must go and fetch my companion, if I am to help." Mayer