"Lumley,.Brian.-.Titus.Crow.2.-.Transition.Of.Titus.Crow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)
'Look out, de Marigny!' Crow yelled too late, as fingers of ice closed about me. 'Look out!'
He need not have worried, for already his voice was fading and the stars were blurring again. In my terror I had lost my mental grip, stretching the thread of psychic contact too fine, until at last it had snapped! The hurtling clock and the man it carried, the monstrous beast-thing that but a moment before held me in its foul hands, these things and the very stars themselves now rushed away from me, receding in a twinkling. Yet still, over vast distances, I could somehow see that dreadful scene.
In a rage that his victim should so escape him the Wind-Walker turned from a short-lived, futile pursuit of myself to an awesome attack on Crow in his space-time machine. Moreover, before the scene dwindled away completely and the winds between the worlds once more claimed me, to whirl me off to my house of flesh on Earth, I saw Crow fight back!
He had said that the CCD dared not interfere with him directly, and now I saw what he meant. As the Wind-Walker reached for the coffin-clock, his burning carmine eyes full of blood lust and his whole attitude one of mad bestial fury, there shot out from the dial of that fantastic vehicle a pencil slim beam of purest light. The beam struck the striding god-thing square in his monstrous chest. Though I personally could never claim to be endowed with anything much greater than the usual sense perceptions, even I heard the telepathic shriek of most
terrible agony that Ithaqua uttered before turning and bounding away, seeming to stagger now as he fled for the farthest stars.
My last conscious act was an abortive attempt to hang on as there came from dark and rapidly receding deeps Crow's fading, aching cry: 'Wait for me, de Marigny. I'm trying to follow you . . . wait for me . . .'
Finding myself once again in my physical body was a painful affair, far more so than on any previous occasion. For though I had left my body sitting in an easy chair before my desk, (while my psyche had been busy dodging hurtling stars and nebulae out in the farthest reaches of space,) that supposedly empty shell had apparently reacted to my psychical danger in a similar manner right here in my study! In fact, just as one often wakes up from a nightmare still fighting the horrors of the subconscious until the moment of total awakening and awareness, so I now found myself engaged in a desperate struggle with my Boukhara carpets. My chair lay on its side; a bookshelf and its contents had been brought down by my kicking, scrabbling feet.
Mercifully I had not knocked over my reading lamp; that still stood on my desk, holding the shadows back in my study. My robe was torn, drenched with cold sweat.
I got to my feet and crossed unsteadily to the bay window overlooking my garden. Night had fallen, black and cold, but the sky was clear and all the stars shone brightly down. Opening the windows, I looked up at those stars and shuddered, then instinctively shielded my eyes as, suddenly, the whole sky blazed with an incredibly brilliant flash of lightning!
I had time for one thought only - lightning? From a clear sky? - before feeling the effects of a tremendous rushing blast of air. The windows slammed in on me,
throwing me to the floor; a rising wind howled wildly in the eaves; my reading lamp dimmed and almost went out, then burned bright again; and finally there came a clap of thunder to end all thunderclaps!
In another second the acrid reek of ozone filled the air of the room. My God! I thought. It's hit the house! But then, lifting my aching head up from the floor for the second time in the space of only a minute or so, I realized that nothing had hit the house, but perhaps something had entered it! For two sources of illumination now lit my study. My reading lamp was one of them, burning a steady electric yellow upon the desk; and the other . . .
The other was a purplish throbbing glow whose source lay in a corner of the room hidden from view by my desk. I climbed to my feet again, stumbling as I sought to recover from the combined effects of that blinding flash of lightning and its colossal accompanying thunderclap. And then, as I tottered forward, my jaw fell open in awed amazement and delight.
I had guessed what I would see, certainly, for I recognized that pulsing purplish glow of old. Nevertheless, there in the far corner of my study, charred, blackened, strangely steaming and peculiarly scarred, its frontal panel open to emit that eerie oscillating glow, stood the great coffin-shaped grandfather clock that once belonged to my father. And sprawled at its foot, his head even now lifting from the floor and his arms pushing his shoulders up and back, was Titus Crow, a grimace of pain upon his face as he tried vainly to rise.
'Titus!' I cried, starting forward. 'Is it you?' For indeed I had already noted strange inconsistencies. For one thing, this seemed a much younger man than the one I had known. But then, looking up at me and finally managing a grin - oh, yes, this was Titus all right, despite the fact that he looked young enough to be my brother!
'Any - ah! - coffee in the house, de Marigny?' he groaned painfully. 'Or perhaps - oh! - a spot of brandy?' Then his eyes rolled up and his shoulders sagged, and with a sigh he collapsed unconscious in my arms.
A Universe for the Taking!
(From de Marigny's notebooks)
Toward morning Crow came around briefly, long enough to take a sip of coffee before lapsing again into deep sleep. Fatigue was all that ailed him, and this much I was sure of for I had called in a certain ecclesiastical doctor immediately after Crow's collapse in my study. The doctor was none other than the Reverend Harry Townley, a friend, confidant and former neighbor of Crow's in the old days. Now retired and having been out of the country for some months, only recently returning, Harry had known nothing of my own remarkable return until my telephone call got him out of bed. The last he remembered of Crow and myself was in connection with a night some ten years ago, when he had watched from his house the so-called freak localized storm that ripped down Blowne House brick by brick and, as far as Harry Townley knew, destroyed the two of us utterly, leaving no traces.
My call must therefore have been doubly shocking to the old doctor. Not only was he receiving a call for assistance from a man he had every right to believe dead, but on behalf of a second dead man! And yet the urgency in my voice had got through to him immediately, that and the fact that I was not simply some rather grim hoaxer. It was only after he had given the unconscious man a thorough going over, when finally we left Crow sleeping in a comfortable spare bed, that I noticed the doctor's bemused expression. Of course I asked him what was wrong.
answered. 'I don't think there's much he could do now, or anything that could happen to him, to surprise me. And that's as well, too, for this time . . .' He shook his head. 'Go on then,' I prompted him. 'Well,' he slowly continued, 'first let me say that there can be no doubt about his identity. This is Titus Crow. And yet, there are places on his body where he should be marked but isn't, places where I remember small scars to have been, which now seem to have vanished. It would take the most brilliant plastic surgeon in the world half a lifetime to do such a beautiful job! And that's only the beginning. He is ... younger!' 'I thought so, too,' I answered. 'But how can that be?' 'I have no idea.' He stared at me blankly. 'I don't see how it can be. I can only say that his is the body of a man of, say, thirty-eight years. Somewhere he's lost a quarter of a Century. And even that is only part of it. The rest is completely . . .' He shook his head, at a loss for words. 'The rest?' I pressed him.
'Where have you been, you two, and what have you been up to?' he answered with questions of his own. I shrugged. 'Myself, I've been . . . nowhen!' 'Eh?'
I shook my head negatively. 'Hard to explain. I just haven't been here, that's all. And as for Crow, don't ask me where he's been. If I told you what I believe you'd probably think I was a madman. I really think, though, that now that he's back he wants his presence here kept secret.'
He nodded. 'You can rely on me to say nothing about tonight. And I'm not the curious type. There's nothing you need tell me.'
'Fine,' I answered, 'but there's something I would like to know. What is it you've found out about Crow that's so fantastic?'
'It's his heart,' he answered after a moment.
'His heart? Why, what's wrong with his heart?'
'Oh, nothing much,' he answered, putting on his coat and starting for the door. 'Hadn't you noticed that there's no heartbeat?'
That good old English reserve indeed! 'No heartbeat?' I cried after him. 'My God! But if his heart's not working, then -' .
'God?' he tossed over his shoulder, frowning as he cut me off. 'Yes, I suppose He must have had something to do with it, but who said anything about Crow's heart not working? It most certainly is working, and very efficiently at that, but it's not beating! It's humming, purring away like a satisfied kitten in his chest. Or rather, like a very well oiled machine!'
The doctor was right of course. As soon as he left I went back to Crow and stood watching him for a few moments. His respiration seemed fairly normal; he had a normal body temperature; but when I laid a hand upon his chest ... his heart purred, 'like a very well oiled machine'!
All that had been twenty-four hours ago. Now night was upon the house again and I had dozed briefly in a chair beside my friend's bed. It was hardly surprising that I myself was tired: I had watched over Titus Crow's recumbent form continuously, taking a break only to grab a bite to eat.
I awoke feeling cramped and clammy. Crow's bed was empty, the blankets thrown back. I realized what had roused me - noises from my kitchen, recurring now, the clatter of plates, my kettle whistling, the dull thud of the refrigerator door closing.
'Titus?' I yawned, leaving the spare bedroom and making for the kitchen. 'Are you all ... right?'
The last word fell flat from my mouth as I reached the
kitchen door. He certainly looked all right! Two plates ors top of the open refrigerator were piled with cold meat sandwiches, coffee steamed in a large jug and Titus Crow, with a leg of chicken in one hand, was methodically searching the cupboards for an elusive something. He was even mumbling to himself through a bite of chicken about civilization going all to hell! 'If you're looking for the brandy,' I said, 'I don't keep
it In here.'
He turned and saw me, put down his chicken leg and bounded over to me, gripping my hand in a firm if greasy greeting. 'You old dog!' he rumbled, his voice showing a strength and vitality rare in the older man I had previously known. Then he grinned, his eyes brighter than I remembered them, and said, 'No, no, Henri, I've found the brandy.' He showed me the neck of a bottle protruding from a pocket of the robe I had left for him on his bed. Tm looking for the corkscrew!'
He began to laugh and I joined him, the two of us roaring with laughter until it hurt, literally laughing till we cried. Then we ate and drank and laughed some more, remembering old times. The night flew by as we reminisced, often in more somber moods but inevitably in delight at this reunion, the two of us, fit and well. Much later, slightly drunk and filled to capacity with food, I sat back and watched him carry on alone as if he would empty my pantry. Finally replete, one might almost say bulging, he stood up and stretched and asked me where his cloak was.
For a moment I misunderstood. 'Your cloak? You mean that rag you had thrown about your shoulders when you . . . arrived? That and your Arabian Nights trousers are stashed in a box under your bed.'
The Arabian Nights!' he answered with a grin. 'Not
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