"C M Kornbluth - Thirteen O'Clock UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

Thirteen O'Clock
I
PETER PACKER folded the carpenter's rule and rose from his knees, brushing dust from the neat crease of his serge trousers. No doubt of it-the house had a secret attic room. Peter didn't know anything about sliding panels or hidden buttons; in the most direct way imaginable he lifted the axe he had brought and crunched it into the wall.
On his third blow he holed through. The rush of air from the darkness was cool and sweet. Smart old boy, his grandfather, thought Peter. Direct ventilation all over the house-even in a false compartment. He chopped away heartily, the hollow strokes ringing through the empty attic and down the stairs.
He could have walked through the hole erect when he was satisfied with his labors; instead he cautiously turned a flashlight inside the space. The beam was invisible; all dust had long since settled. Peter grunted. The floor seemed to be sound. He tested it with one foot, half in, half out of the hidden chamber. It held.
The young man stepped through easily, turning the flash on walls and floor. The room was not large, but it was cluttered with a miscellany of objects-chests, furniture, knick-knacks and what-nots. Peter opened a chest, wondering about pirate gold. But there was no gold, for the thing was full to the lid with chiffons in delicate hues. A faint fragrance of musk filled the ah-; sachets long since packed away were not entirely gone.
Funny thing to hide away, thought Peter. But Grandfather Packer had been a funny man-having this house built to his own very sound plans, waiting always on the Braintree docks for the China and India Clippers and what rare cargo they
might have brought. Chiffons! Peter pocked around in the box for a moment, then closed the lid again. There were others.
He turned the beam of the light on a wall lined with shelves. Pots of old workmanship-spices and preserves, probably. And a clock. Peter stared at the clock. It was about two by two by three feet-an unusual and awkward size. The workmanship was plain, the case of crudely finished wood. And yet there was something about it-his eyes widened as he realized what it was. The dial showed thirteen hours!
Between the flat figures XII and I there was another-an equally flat XIII. What sort, of freak this was the young man did not know. Vaguely he conjectured on prayer-time, egg-boiling and all the other practical applications of chronometry. But nothing he could dredge up from his well-stored mind would square with this freak. He set the, flash on a shelf and hefted the clock in his arms, lifting it easily.
This, he thought, -iwould bear looking into. Putting the light in his pocket he carried the clock down the stairs to his second-floor bedroom. It looked strangely incongruous there, set on a draftsman's table hung with rules and T squares. Determinedly Peter was beginning to pry open the back with a chisel, when it glided smoothly open without tooling. There was better construction in the old timeplace than he had realized. The little hinges were still firm and in working order. He peered into the works and ticked his nail against one of the chimes. It sounded sweet and clear. The young man took a parr of pliers. Lord knew where the key was, he thought, as he began to wind the clock. He nudged the pendulum. Slowly it got under way, ticking loudly. The thing had stopped at 12:59. That would be nearly one o'clock in any other timepiece; on this the minute hand crept slowly toward the enigmatic XIII.
Peter wound the striking mechanism carefully, and watched as a little whir sounded. The minute hand met the Roman numeral, and with a click the chimes sounded out in an eerie, jangling discord. Peter thought with sudden confusion that all was not well with the clock as he had thought. The chimes grew louder, filling the little bedroom with their clang.
Horrified, the young man put his hands on the clock as though he could stop off the noise. As he shook the old cabinet the peals redoubled until they battered against the ear-
drums of the draftsman, ringing in his skull and resounding from the walls, making instruments dance and rattle on the drawing-board. Peter drew back, his hands to his ears. He was foiled with nausea, his eyes bleared and smarting. As the terrible clock thundered out its din without end he reached the door feebly, the room swaying and spinning about him, nothing real but the suddenly glowing clock-dial and the clang and thunder of its chimes.
He opened the door and it ceased; he closed his eyes in relief as his nausea passed. He looked up again, and his eyes widened with horror. Though it was noon outside a night-wind fanned his face, and though he was on the second-story landing of his Grandfather Packer's house dark trees rose about him, stretching as far as the eye could see.
For three hours-by his wristwatch's luminous dial-Peter had wandered, aimless and horrified, waiting for dawn. The aura of strangeness that hung over the forest in which he walked was bearable; it was the gnawing suspicion that he had gone mad that shook him to his very bones. The trees were no ordinary things, of that he was sure. For he had sat down under one forest giant and leaned back against its bole only to rise with a cry of terror. He had felt its pulse beat slowly and regularly under the bark. After that he did not dare to rest, but he was a young and, normal male. Whether he would or not he found himself blundering into ditches and stones from sheer exhaustion. Finally, sprawled on the ground, he slept.
Peter woke stiff and sore from his nap on the bare ground, but he felt better for it. The sun was high in the heavens; he saw that it was about eleven o'clock. Remembering his terrors of the night he nearly laughed at himself. This was a forest, and there were any number of sane explanations how he got here. An attack of amnesia lasting about twelve hours would be one cause. And there were probably others less disturbing.
He thought the country might be Maine. God knew how many trains or busses he had taken since he lost his memory in his bedroom. Beginning to whistle he strode through the woods. Things were different in the daytime.
There was a sign ahead! He sprinted up to its base. The thing was curiously large, painted in red characters on a great slab of wood, posted on a dead tree some twelve feet from the ground. The sign said ELLIL. He rolled the name over in his
mind and decided that he didn't recognize it. But he couldn't be far from a town or house.
Ahead of him sounded a thunderous grunt.
"Bears!" he thought in a panic. (They had been his childhood bogies.) But it was no bear, he saw. He almost wished it was. For the thing that was veering on him was a frightful composite of every monster of mythology, menacing him with sabre-like claws and teeth and gusts of flame from its ravening throat. It stood only about as high as the man, and its legs were long, but it seemed ideally styled for destruction.
Without ado he jumped for a tree and dug his toes into the grooves of the bark, shimyng up it like a child. With the creature's Х flaming breath scorching his heels he climbed, stopping only at the third set of main branches, twenty-five feet from the ground. There he clung, limp and shuddering, and looked down.
The creature was hopping grotesquely about the base of the tree, its baleful eyes en him. The man's hand reached for a firmer purchase on the branch, and part came away in his hand. He had picked a sort of coconut-heavy, hard, and with sharp corners. Peter raised his eyes. Why not? Carefully noting the path that the creature below took around the trunk he poised the fruit carefully. Wetting a finger, he adjusted the placing. On a free drop that long you had to allow for windage, he thought.
Twice more around -went the creature, and then its head and the murderous fruit reached the same point at the same time. There was a crunching noise which Peter could hear from where he was and the insides of its head spilled on the forest sward.
"Clever," said a voice beside him on the branch.
He turned with a cry. The speaker was only faintly visible- the diaphanous shadow of a young girl, not more than eighteen, he thought. Calmly it went on, "You must be very mancic to be able to land a fruit so accurately. Did he give you an extra sense?" Her tone was light, but from what he could see of her dim features they were curled in an angry smile.
Nearly letting go of the branch in his bewilderment he answered as calmly as he could, "I don't know who you mean. And what is mancic?"
"Innocent," she said coldly. "Eh? I could push you off this
branch without a second thought. But first you tell me where Almarish got the model for you. I might turn out a few myself. Are you a doppleganger or a golem?"
"Neither," he spat, bewildered and horrified. "I don't even know what they are!"
"Strange," said the girl. "I can't read you." Her eyes squinted prettily and suddenly became solid, luminous wedges in her transparent face. "Well," she sighed, "let's get out of this." She took the man by his elbow and dropped from the branch, hauling him after her. Ready for a sickening impact with the ground, Peter winced as his heels touched it light as a feather. He tried to disengage the girl's grip, but it was steel-hard.
"None of that," she warned him. "I have a blast-finger. Or didn't he tell you?"
"What's a blast-finger?" demanded the engineer.
"Just so you won't try anything," she commented. "Watch." Her body solidified then, and she pointed her left index finger at a middling-sized tree. Peter hardly saw what happened, being more interested in the incidental miracle of her face and figure. But his attention was distracted by a flat crash of thunder and sudden glare. And the tree was riven as if by a terrific stroke of lightning. Peter smelled ozone as he looked from the tree to the girl's finger and back again. "Okay," he said.
"No nonsense?" she asked. "Come on."
They passed between two trees, and the vista of forest shimmered and tore, revealing a sort of palace-all white stone and maple timbers. "That's my place," said the girl.
II
"Now," she said, settling herself into a cane-backed chair. Peter looked about the room. It was furnished comfortably with pieces of antique merit, in the best New England tradition. His gaze shifted to the girl, slender and palely luminous, with a half-smile playing about her chisled features.
"Do you mind," he said slowly, "not interrupting until I'm finished with what I have to say?"
"A message from Almarish? Go on."
And at that he completely lost his temper. "Listen, you snip!" he raged. "I don't know who you are or where I am but I'd like to tell you that this mystery isn't funny or even mysterious-just downright rude. Do you get that? Now-my name is Peter Packer. I live in Braintree, Mass. I make my living as a consulting engineer. This place obviously isn't Braintree, Mass. Right? Then where is it?"
"Ellil," said the girl simply.
"I saw that on a sign," said Packer. "It still doesn't mean anything to me. Where is Ellil?"
Her face became suddenly grave. "You may be telling the truth," she said thoughtfully. "I do not know yet. Will you allow me to test you?"
"Why should I?"
"Remember my blast-finger?"
Packer winced. "Yes," he said. "What are the tests?"
"The usual," she smiled. "Rosemary and garlic, crucifixes and the secret name of Jehovah. If you get through those you're okay."
"Then get on with it," he said, confusedly.