"Henry Kuttner - Shock UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

3. SHOCK

WHEN GREGG LOOKED up from his book to see the man crawling through the wall of his apartment, he thought briefly that he was crazy. Such things don't happen to a middle-aged physicist who has arranged his life into an ordered pattern. Nevertheless, there was now a hole in the wall, and a half-naked person with macrocephalia was wedging himself through it.

'Who the hell are you?' Gregg demanded, recovering the use of his tongue.

The man spoke an odd sort of English, slurred and with an extraordinary tonal range, but recognizable. 'I'm a mug-wump,' he announced, balancing on his middle. 'My mug's in ... eh? ... in 1953 and my wump's in ... wA!" He gave a convulsive wriggle and burst through, sprawling on the carpet and breathing hard. 'That was a nardly squeeze. The valve isn't quite big enough yet. Forthever.'

It made sense, but not much. Manning Gregg's heavy, leonine features darkened. He reached out, seized a heavy book end, and rose.

'I am Halison,' the newcomer announced, adjusting his toga. "This should be 1953. Norvunder soverless.'

'What?'

'Semantic difficulty," Halison told him. 'I am from about . . .' well, several thousand years in the future. Your future.'

Gregg's gaze went in the hole in the wall. 'You're talking English.'

'Learned it in 1970. This isn't my first trip into past. Many of them. Looking for something. ImportantЧskandarly important. I use mental power to warp space-time pharron, so valve opens. Lend me clothes, if you please?'

Still holding the book end, Gregg walked to the wall and looked through the circular gap, just large enough to admit a small man's body. All he could see was a blue, bare wall apparently a few feet away. The adjoining apartment? Improbable.

Valve will open wider later,' Halison said. 'Open at night, closed by day. I must be back before Thursday. Ranil-Mens visits me on Thursdays. But now may I beg clothes? There is something I must findЧЧ I have been searching in time for a long carvishtime. Please?'

He was still squatting on the floor. Gregg stared down at his extraordinary visitor. Halison was certainly not Homo sapiens

1953. He had a pinched, bright-pink face, with very large bright eyes, and his cranium was abnormally developed and totally bald. He had six fingers and his toes had fused. And he kept up a continual nervous trembling, as though his metabolism had gone haywire.

'Good Lord!' Gregg said, suddenly understanding. "This isn't a gag. Is it?' His voice rose.

'Gag, gag, gag. Nevishly holander sprae? Was mugwump wrong? Hard to know what to say in new time-world. You have no conception of our advanced culture, sorry. Hard to get down to same plane with you. Civilization moved fast, fast, after your century. There is not much time. Talk later, but important now that you lend me clothes.'

There was a cold, hard knot just under Gregg's backbone. 'Yes, butЧwait. If this isn't someЧЧЧ'

'Forgive me,' Halison remarked. 'I am looking for something; great hurry. I will return soon. By Thursday anyway to see Ranil-Mens. I get much wisdom from him. Now, forgive reedishly.' He touched Gregg's forehead.

The physicist said, 'Talk a bit slower, piЧЧЧ'

Halison was gone.

Gregg whirled, searching the room with his gaze. Nothing. Except that the hole in the wall had doubled in diameter. What the hell.

He looked at the clock. It was just past eight. It should have been about seven. An hour had passed, it seemed, since Halison had reached out to touch his forehead.

As a sample of hypnotism, it was damned impressive.

Gregg carefully found a cigarette and lit it. Drawing smoke into his lungs, he looked at the valve from across the room and considered. A visitor from the future, eh? WellЧЧ

Struck by an obvious thought, he went into the bedroom and discovered that a suit of clothes, a brown Harris tweed, had been confiscated. A shirt was missing, a tie, and a pair of shoes. But the hole in the wall eliminated the chance that this was merely a clever theft. For one thing, Gregg's wallet was still in his trousers pocket.