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

started back into the tunnel.
"Your friend is not functioning well. Shall I help her.?"
"Yes. Sure. Anything you want."
The honorable loan shark had no intention of staying in this bizarre
place for one second longer than necessary. Obviously someone was playing
an improbably elaborate hoax; and he didn't like the smell of it. My, the
depth of that illusion looked real. Breathtaking.
A projection of some kind was it? He hoped he'd be able to drag the
drunk out of the door before his hosts caught on.
Moments later, when he got back to the point he'd come in, there was
the woman, sitting up and coughing juicily. No door. The door had
disappeared.
"What's going on?" His rising fear provoked him to anger. "I've got
to go to work; and the Seaman's Benevolent isn't going to like anyone who
makes me late!"
"Can it, will ya," said the woman. "My head aches."
"I see you sobered up fast. So you're in on this, too."
"In on what?" Something lifted me up and put a hose in my mouth and
squirted something into my lungs. Now I don't hurt any more; and I'm
sober."
"You were too drunk to know."
"I was sick more than drunk, just getting drunk so I could die
feeling no pain. I was aware when you picked me up and carried me in here.
I just couldn't make my muscles work."
The strangeness of the woman's plight suddenly struck her. "What's
going on?" she asked.
The look of startled realization on her face and his remembrance of
how ill had been the bundle he'd dragged into this place, made Mayer
believe the lady's claim.
The drunk coughed up some fluid and spat. "That hurt," she said. "But
down inside, I feel better. How did you do it? How did you get that thing
to make me better?"
"I didn't do anything. Where's the door?"
"It rolled up."
"It couldn't have rolled up."
"It did."
Mayer's stomach knotted. He felt weak. "C'mon. Can you walk?"
As he helped the woman up, he smelled the stink he'd been too busy to
notice before. He also saw that his charge was fairly young, 35 at most--a
few years younger than he--and not unattractive. The disheveled brown hair
and the filth and the rumpled clothes had deceived him.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Dierdra Hoffman."
"A nice German last name. Let's get out of here."
After determining they were genuinely in a cull-de-sac, Mayer
retraced the corridor quickly, pulling the woman along, eagle eyeing the
walls for any sign of branching, often feeling for what he might not see.
When they came out of the tunnel, he asked, "Are you sure you weren't
moved?"
"Positive." She looked around.