"Keith Laumer - The World Shuffler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

He started up the stairs, found himself taking them three at a time. The carpeting had
been removed from the upper corridor, the walls stripped of the paintings of courtiers of
bygone years. He flung wide his apartment door, stared at the unfurnished room, the
drape less windows.
"Good Lord, I've been robbed!" he gasped. He turned to the closet, almost banged his
nose against the wall. There was no closetтАФand the wall was twelve feet closer than it
should have been.
"Daphne!" he yelled, and dashed into the hall. It was definitely shorter than it had
been, and the ceiling was lower. And it was dark; half the windows were missing. His
shout echoed emptily. No one answered.
"Nicodaeus!" he gulped. "I'll have to telephone Nicodaeus at Central! He'll know what
to do . . ." He darted along to the tower door, raced up the narrow, winding stone steps
leading to the former Court Magician's laboratory. Nicodaeus was long gone, of course,
recalled by Central for duty elsewhere; but there was still the telephone, locked in the
cabinet on the wall; if only he could get there before . . . before . . . O'Leary thrust the
thought aside. He didn't even want to think of the possibility that the cabinet might be
empty.
Puffing hard, he reached the final landing and pushed through into the narrow, granite-
walled chamber. There were the work benches, the shelves piled high with stuffed owls,
alarm clocks, bottles, bits of wire, odd-shaped assemblies of copper and brass and crystal.
Under the high, cobwebbed ceiling, the gilded skeleton, now mantled with dust, dangled
on its wire before the long, black, crackle-finished panel set with dials and gauges, now
dark and silent. Lafayette turned to the locked cabinet beside the door, fumbled out a
small golden key, fitted it into the keyhole; he held his breath, and opened the door. With
a hiss of relief, he grabbed up the old-fashioned brass-mounted telephone inside. Faint
and far away came a wavering dial tone.
O'Leary moistened dry lips, frowning in concentration: "Nine, five, three, four, nine,
oh, oh, two, one, one," he dialed, mouthing the numbers.
There were cracklings on the wire. Lafayette felt the floor stir under him. He looked
down; the rough stone slabs had been replaced by equally rough-hewn wood planks.
"Ring, blast it," he groaned. He jiggled the hook, was rewarded by soft electrical
poppings.
"Somebody answer!" he yelped. "You're my last hope!"
A draft of cool air riffled his hair. He whirled, saw that he now stood in a roofless
chamber, empty of everything but scattered leaves and bird droppings. Even as he
watched, the quality of the light changed; he whirled back; the wall against which the
cabinet had been mounted was gone, replaced by a single post. There was a tug at his
hand, and he continued the spin, made a frantic grab for the telephone, now resting
precariously on one arm of a rickety windmill, at the top of which he seemed to be
perched. Grabbing for support as the structure swayed in the chill wind, creaking, he
looked down at what appeared to be a carelessly tended cabbage patch.
"Central!" he yelled through a throat suddenly as tight as though a hand had closed
about it. "You can't leave me here like this!" He rattled the instrument frantically.
Nothing happened.
After three more tries he hung the phone up with dazed care, as if it were made of
eggshells. Clinging to his high perch, he stared out across the landscape of bramble-
covered hillside toward a dilapidated town a quarter of a mile distant, no more than a
sprawl of ramshackle buildings around the lake. The topography, he noted, was the same
as that of ArtesiaтАФor of Colby Corners, for that matterтАФbut gone were the towers and
avenues and parks.