"Brian Lumley - Psychomech 01 - Psychomech" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

suspected that Horror also lurked in the castle, and he had sworn to banish that horror forever. Even if it meant
destroying the girl, the man, the Black Room and the very castle itself!
And yet still he prayed that he might somehow save the girl.
He turned the Machine, sent it rushing back over the roof of the bleached brittle forest, turned it again and hurled it
at the lake. His mind powered the strange Machine, drove it like a bullet from a gun at the rock that loomed and leered
in the oily lake - so that when the Machine came up against the Power from the castle and slammed to a halt, Garrison
and the bitch were almost hurled from its glittering back.
How the Machine fought him then. He knew that it would throw him, trample him, kill him if it could. And it could!
ExceptтАФ
As the Machine fought to be rid of him, the man-God came. A face in the sky. Bald, domed head; eyes that loomed
bright and huge behind lenses that magnified monstrously; an agonized, pleading voice that cried out to Garrison:
ACCEPT ME, RICHARD! LET ME IN. ACCEPT AND WIN!.
тАШNo!тАЩ he shook his head, afraid of the man-God no less than of what he might find in the Black Room. He gritted his
teeth and battled with the Machine.
 THEN YOU ARE DEAD! the man-God cried. BOTH OF US, DEAD. AND WHAT OF OUR BARGAIN, GARRISON?
DONтАШT YOU REMEMBER? YOU CAN WIN, GARRISON, LIVE. WE BOTH CAN. BELIEVE ME, YOU DONтАШT WANT
TO DIE. AFTER ALL, I KNOW WHAT ITтАШS LIKE HERE.
тАШNo!тАЩ Garrison screamed.
A cube, small, brown, burning, came hurtling out of the sky from afar. It paused, spinning, between the desperate
face of the man-God over the lake and Garrison where he fought the Machine.
The cube expanded, contracted, glowed hot as the heart of a sun - exploded!
White fire and heat and blast and searing agonyтАФ
GarrisonтАЩs eyes-
тАФAnd coming awake with a strangled scream, to find an autumn sun shining damply through the drizzle on his
windows. And the hands on his alarm clock standing at 6.30 A.M., the calendar telling him it was a Friday in
September, 1972, and the nightmare receding.
He clutched at his mattress, damp with his sweat, licked dry lips and desperately tried to conjure the details of the
dream. For one instant they stood out clearly in his mind and he could feel again the frantic bucking of the Machine,
then swept away, rushing away into distances of mind, they were gone. And only the fading howl of a dog echoed
back to him.
And with that howl ringing in his ears Garrison knew that he had dreamed again of a silver car, a black bitch, two
men, a man-God, a beautiful girl - and a Machine.
And an unknown Horror.
The known horror was waiting for him in the city. Out in the corridor the night-duty Corporal was hammering out his
own hideous version of reveille on an empty fire bucket...

Chapter One

It was Belfast and the year was 1972, a Friday afternoon in late September.
Thomas Schroeder, German industrialist, sat at a small table in a barroom with a sawdust floor. A brass spittoon lay
under the chipped mahogany footrail against the dully stained skirting of the bar. Blinds were drawn at the windows
and a single naked electric light bulb high in the centre of the ceiling burned fitfully, its filament almost spent. Its dull
gleam was twinned in SchroederтАЩs spectacles.
Beside him, shuffling uncomfortably on a bolted-down wooden bench, sat his friend, his sometime secretary and his
constant companion, Willy Koenig. Opposite them sat two other men whose faces were almost obscured beneath thick
hair and unkempt beards. What little could be seen of their actual faces seemed largely blank, impassive. They had
been speaking to Schroeder, these two Irishmen, in voices which, despite the soft lilt of a naturally roguish brogue,
had been coarse and filled with terrible words.
KoenigтАЩs hands were nervous on the thick black briefcase that lay before him on the wooden table. An ugly tic
jerked the flesh at the corner of his mouth. He sweated profusely, despite the coolness of the room. He had sweated