"C M Kornbluth - Kazam Collects" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

the middle distance was a stone tower above which circled winged skullsтАФbat-winged skulls, whose
rattling and flapping he could plainly hear.



From the plainтАФhe realized then that it was a desert of fine, white sandтАФspouted up little funnels or
vortices of fog in a circle around bun. He began to run very slowly, much slower than he wanted to. He
thought he was running away from the tower and the vortices, but somehow they continued to stay in his
field of vision. No matter where he swerved the tower was always hi front and the little twisters around
him. The circle was growing smaller around him, and he redoubled his efforts to escape.



Finally he tried flying, leaping into the air. Though he drifted for yards at a tune, slowly and easily, he
could not land where he wanted to. From the air the vortices looked like petals of a flower, and when he
came drifting down to the desert he would land hi the very center of the strange blossom.



Again he ran, the circle of foggy ccnes following still, the tower still before him. He felt with his bare feet
something tinglingly clammy. The circle had contracted to the point of coalescence, had gripped his two
feet like a trap.



He shot into the air and headed straight for the tower. The creaking, napping noise of the bat-winged
skulls was very much louder now. He cast his eyes to the side and was just able to see the tips of his own
black, flapping membranes. As though regular nightmaresтАФalways the same, yet increasingly repulsive to
the detectiveтАФwere not- enough woe for one man to bear, he was troubled with a sudden, appalling
sharpness of hearing. This was strange, for Fitzgerald had always been a little deaf in one ear.



The noises he heard were distressing things, things like the ticking of a wristwatch two floors beneath his
flat, the gurgle of water in sewers as he walked tile streets, humming of underground telephone wires.
Headquarters was a bedlam with its stentorian breathing, the machine-gun fire of a telephone being
dialed, the howitzer crash of a cigarette case snapping shut.



He had his bedroom soundproofed and tried to bear it The inches of fibreboard helped a little; he found
that he could focus his attention on a book and practically exclude from his mind the regular swish of air
in his bronchial tubes,



the thudding at his wrists and temples, the slushing noise of food passing through his transverse colon.