"Lumley,.Brian.-.Titus.Crow.2.-.Transition.Of.Titus.Crow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)
simple: using the clock's scanners I could see my immediate surroundings even in the dark, but once I left that strange vessel I would have to rely solely on my own five senses. So I waited for the sun to come up before opening the panel and stepping out into a weird, fascinating and deadly world.
And it was then, striking through all my wonder and delight - the origin of which I will explain in a minute -that I first realized just how hungry I was. Oh, I was tired, too, terribly tired, but it was purely a fatigue of mind now. The clock had taken much out of me, sapping emotions as hard work saps physical strength. Even so, despite this emotional weariness, I was astounded, amazed, yes, and delighted. Do you see, Henri? Now I knew where I was. Perhaps I should really say I knew when I was, for I was back, way back, deep in the prehistoric world of the Cretaceous!
The Cretaceous was the last period of the Mesozoic, one hundred million years ago! It was also the Age of Reptiles, when the dinosaurs were lords. When giant Archelon turtles and mosasaurs swam in soupy oceans that were not nearly as salty as they are now, and scythe-winged Pteranodon called hideously to his mate as he winged on creaking leather through rich warm skies beneath billowing, soaring clouds.
It was an age of primal things - colors, odors, sights, sounds and sensations - so that even the wind felt different against my skin. It was Earth in the glory of youth, with all of creation insane in a frenzy of experimental trial and error, building new life-forms and changing them, destroying and then building anew. And the thought of man had not even crossed Nature's mind, would not for another ninety million years!
Men? Why, Nature did not build things as puny as men in those days! They were the days of python-necked
Brachiosaurus; of tank-like Triceratops, beside whom a rhinoceros would seem the merest toy; of Tyrannosaurus, who bellowed and strode the land on powerful piston legs, king of all the dinosaurs, ruling his cycadeoid domain with a tyrant's lusts and rages. Even the mollusks were monsters in those days, like titan-valved Inoceramus, which dwarfed even the greatest of today's Tridacna. Oysters, too, proliferated in those youthful seas, producing pearls as big as a man's fist, pearls that the ages have since reduced again to calcium dust. It was on the shore of just such a Cretaceous coral sea that I now found myself.
I knew it was the Cretaceous, I recognized it as surely as I would King's Cross or the tones of Big Ben, without stepping more than a dozen paces from the open panel of the clock. It had chiefly to do with that fossil collection of mine that I've mentioned. Favorites among those fossils were certain ammonites from this period, hard, lusterless things, drab as gray pebbles on a beach; but there in that coral pool upon whose edge I stood played myriads of these very creatures, alive and glowing in a morning sun that already drew mist up from the damp sands. Weirdly coiled, octopoid Helioceras, unicorn-horn Baculites and intelligent-eyed Placenticeras, all were there, groping with tiny tentacular arms, darting on squid jets, swimming in crystal waters that teemed with uncountable struggling life-forms. And lifting my eyes to the crashing ocean beyond I caught a glimpse of spray-wreathed Tylosaurus as the head and back of that primal sea serpent broke the frothing waters. In distant skies enormous, fantastic shapes flitted: Pteranodons, flying reptiles, darting to snatch bony fishes from white-tipped wave crests.
Oh, yes, without the least shadow of a doubt, I recognized this age, the Cretaceous. And I knew, too, that my
physical hunger, the emptiness in my belly, should not go lung unabated.
Close by, within a hundred yards landward of the beach, a low volcanic vent was steaming, its lava lip glowing red: there was my cooking fire. And here at my feet great crabs and lobsters, creatures halfway between trilobites and crayfish, moved on segmented legs in jeweled waters. Palm-like trees with large, strange nuts grew further along the shore, cycads and flowering trees, too, doubtless bearing fruit. Even as I gazed a small furry mammal sprang down from one of the nearer palms, scampered to the next and up into its green shade. Oh, there was food enough here, more than enough. Why, if a man had a rocket-launcher, doubtless back beyond that low range of volcanic mountains, in the cycad forests, he could bring down ten tons of meat with one shot - if he had the nerve! I would be satisfied with a lobster, and fruit for dessert and perhaps the milk of a coconut to wash it all down. I might even find myself a spring, with water that never had to recycle itself to remove detergents or DDT.
Now then, was the tide in or out? I scanned the beach for a tidemark and found it, many yards down from where I stood. To the rear of the clock the sand was yellow, unwashed. Nonetheless the pool at my feet with its many denizens showed quite clearly that the sea had recently reached this spot. Perhaps the tides were irregular, perhaps they had not quite settled yet to the pull of the moon. I had best move the clock back, higher up the beach to where the first palms and cycads fringed the feet of the volcanic hills. The volcanoes themselves did not worry me greatly; a few lava-bombs lay scattered about but the majority of them were old. That line of livid cones 1 had passed over last night - the night to come? - lay some miles west, behind this lower range.
I found a spiked branch of coral and speared myself a large wriggling lobster-thing, killing it immediately with a rock that severed its head from its body. Then I carried my breakfast back to the clock. I moved inshore to the fringe of palms, and sure enough the ground held a scattering of great nuts. As I hefted one, there came a liquid swishing from within its globe. Fruits there were, too, and I tentatively tasted one that looked like a small pear. Its juice was sweet, tangy and pleasing but like nothing I ever tasted before. This was a primal taste, from which lesser tastes might later distill themselves. Indeed it was heady, that taste, so that later I sang as I roasted my lobster in its shell on a coral spit over the fiery breath of a volcanic blowhole.
Feasted as royally as any lord, feeling a contentedness of soul experienced all too rarely in a lifetime, I ambled back in the warm sunshine toward the clock where it stood shaded beneath swaying, coarse-grained palms. In an instant, as I passed where I had not walked before, I was brought back down to earth with a jolt. There, in the dark yellowish soil at the edge of the palm clump, was a footprint - no, a clawprint! Huge, it was, that deeply imbedded impression of a hind foot whose owner, I knew, towered twenty feet high and weighed as many tons. Three claws fore and one less prominent behind, the greatest carnivore the world has ever known had made his mark: Tyrannosaurus rex, king tyrant of the giant reptiles!
I have never been a coward, but at sight of that monstrous indentation the hair on my neck prickled in almost preternatural dread. Since the end of the Mesozoic the world has never seen such rampant, unbridled, sheer animal ferocity in any living creature - no, not even in man himself - as in Tyrannosaurus rex. This print was a powerful reminder that I trod ground other than familiar,
other than the safest, where man never trod before. I knew that the longer I stayed the more certain would be my eventual meeting with the creature who made this mark or others like him. I decided on the instant that as soon as I had rested I would be on my way. I would move forward, forward in time to the age of man, leaping the aeons in my time-clock and only pausing to check my progress and eat.
First, though, I would rest, and then I would collect a store of the great nuts and roast myself another lobster, perhaps two, to take with me. The last was imperative. Though I could foresee little difficulty in what I intended to do, who could say for certain that a future opportunity to replenish would present itself? Of course, the need might never arise, but . . . And before I went, why of course I must scour this shore for seashells, for half a dozen of each variety that I could find; and I had to pass over the mountains in my clock to see the primeval forests and their denizens, to fly above the lizard-lands in safety and watch the great beasts at play - and at war!
And yet when I awakened, though I had intended my sleep to last only until midafternoon, it was already late evening and far too dusky to think about gathering seashells, not on that shore, at any rate. There were too many things to worry about in the Cretaceous night. I had earlier set a pair of nuts down beside the clock; now, sitting in the late evening beneath the palms and gazing out over the moonlit sea, I pierced one of the nuts with a coral spike and drank its refreshing milk. In the morning I would drink from the other, then crack them both for their flesh.
The night was warm. The moon, while it was as bright as I had ever known it, seemed smoother somehow, faceless. The stars, though many of their constellations appeared amply familiar, were dim, due to volcanic ash
high in the atmosphere. Of course, for explaining the unscarred surface of the moon, that lunar orb was too young yet to have gathered many craters. Indeed its haze might even suggest that it had a faint atmosphere of sorts, not yet drifted off into space ... A fascinating place, this Cretaceous.
I have never been a moth fancier, indeed most insects are offensive to me one way or the other, but in the Cretaceous some of these nocturnal lepidoptera had wing-spreads of eight inches and more. When I put my hand up to keep one of these from fluttering in my face its fur-edged wings stung me! Likely the creature lived on the poisonous pollens of strange night-blooming flowers. Enough of that! I retreated into the clock and continued to observe the weird night from the safety of its interior.
To my back, several peaks jutting up from the line of hills glowed with volcanic fires. Far along the shore down at the edge of the sea, some shadowy beast splashed and snorted. The sea itself was quiet, the wind of day having dropped to a gentle breeze. Though I rarely smoke, I would have vastly appreciated a good cigar right then, and of course I should dearly have loved a glass of good brandy. I had neither, but I did have one of those intoxicating fruits. Nibbling on this I eventually drifted off into a shallow, troubled sleep.
No, that may give the wrong impression. My sleep was not troubled by nightmares or those nameless fears that waken you in the night drenched with sweat and frightened but unable to recall the threat. In fact my dream was
quite vivid and ineffably beautiful, I could say haunting. Indeed, it haunted me for a long time after. No, it was only disturbing in that I sensed, even dreaming, that this was much more than a dream ... a vision! There were elements in it hinting of an almost telepathic communication, albeit an unwitting one.
I dreamed I was in a tremendous hall or room of fantastic angles and proportions. A curving, high-arched ceiling towered over me like the dome of some hollow mountain. Everything, the gargantuan-paved floor, the distant walls and clouded ceiling, the pillars whose ornate columns supported high balconies lost in rose petal clouds of mist, everything was of crystal. Milky crystal, mother-of-pearl crystal, pink and blood hues of crystal glowed everywhere, like the interior of a splendid conch of the seas of space, letting the light of alien suns shine through its translucent nacre.
Some vague titanic Eminence of similar hues stirred upon a vast seat or throne in a distant curtained alcove. I held my breath, knowing that this was what disturbed me so, this being whose misty form behind luminous pearl-dust drapes flashed fire from jewel-adorned members. 1 did not wish to see the being more clearly; I was glad that it sat far off, that its form was hidden by the crystal sheen emitted by the walls, roof and pillars of this, its palace. I knew, you understand, that this place I was in belonged to the Eminence upon the throne, that being whose presence filled me with a subconscious, psychic unease.
Then my attention focused on a figure in the center of the gigantic room. There a scarlet divan, low but of great surface area, like an enormous pillow, supported a figure at once human and inhuman. It was a woman, with her back to me, and I was glad that this was so for no face could ever hope to match the perfection of that body. I have known women in my youth. I remember beautiful
women, but never has any woman I ever knew looked like this.
She was clothed in a cape of faintly golden bubbles, with a high collar laid back by the weight of hair cascading over it. That hair, it was . . . can green describe it? Highlighted by emerald mists and aquamarine coils, it massed in ringlets down her milk-of-pearl back to a waist delicate as the stem of a crystal wineglass. The cape concealed little. Of bubbles itself, it merely softened the outlines as bubbles do. She knelt, her legs drawn up beneath her and clothed in wide-bottomed trousers of the same spun-gold bubbles. Thigh and hip, waist and back, arms and slender neck and rich, glossy, emerald-flashing hair, all were encased but not enclosed, not concealed, by precious foam-of-gold. No man could look upon this vision and not gasp. Fires I had believed forgotten since my youth raced in molten streams through my body, driven by a furnace heat. And yet, even in my longing, I was sad. No woman's face however lovely could match the beauty of this woman's body. No, Nature herself could never conceive of such a face. But I had to know.
I moved forward, approaching until a perfume distilled of no rare orchids but the flowers of her own milk-of-pearl skin drifted to me. She was so close now that I could touch her. My fingers burned, tingled, ached to stroke that hair, turn that head to me; my eyes desired so to gaze upon that face, even though I knew I must be disappointed. I moved around her, passing over the huge cushion without feeling it, as one moves in a dream. Now I could see . . . her face!
I dared not cry out for fear she would hear me and flee, the thought of which I could not bear. I could no more bear that thought than I could bear the sight of her face, a sight mortal man was surely never intended to see. And yet I was seeing it: the pale pearl brow from which an
emerald ocean sent lustrous waves and wavelets cascading down the spun-gold strand of her cape; the huge eyes of deepest beryl, in which a man might drown, open wide and staring; the mouth, quite beyond my meager powers of description, with its perfect cupid's-bow of pearl-dusted rose, turned down now over teeth whiter than purest snow that bit the flesh of the bottom lip in distress. The whole lucent face was a slender oval, with arching emerald eyebrows almost long enough to melt into the verdure of temples, elfin ears like the petals of rare blooms, a nose so delicate as to go almost unnoticed. She radiated a distillation of Essence of Woman, human but quite alien. A woman - but a goddess, too!
Her eyebrows were drawn now in a frown, and still she bit her lip. The infinite depths of her eyes were worried. Her expression hurt me with concern for her, that she should ever feel the need to worry. She studied a great crystal set in the center of her huge cushion, a sphere of shining brilliance to which 1 eventually managed to drag my eyes from her face. I stared for a moment, and the crystal cleared to show a scene at first unrecognized. There were star-spaces streaked with a comet's blaze, but then that shooting star loomed close and I saw that it was no comet but. . . my clock!
Faster and faster the vessel fled down the void, speeding on an immaculately straight course down to a blackness that loomed in the crystal, a blackness in which no tiniest gleam of light showed. The stars were gone now, leaving nothing but an empty void ahead and an irresistible force that pulled the great clock faster yet toward some unknown doom.
'Kthanid!' the woman on the vast cushion cried, half glancing over her shoulder to where the hidden Eminence sat upon its alcove throne. 'Kthanid, I must go to him at
once or he is lost, my beloved, who you promised me so long ago!'
She had spoken to the Eminence in a voice as wondrous as her face and form, and drawing breath to do so her perfect breasts had lifted, heaving in anguished agitation. Again I glanced at the crystal sphere. Faster still rocketed the clock, its shape beginning to distort, twist and flow. It was my clock, my vessel, and therefore the obvious concern of this goddess must be for me, but how? Why . . .?
In my dream - I will call it that, though I know now it was no such thing - the Eminence stirred behind its pearl-dust curtains, jeweled members writhing and tiny crystal bells chiming as drapes briefly billowed. It answered her, but with no voice of sound. In my head I heard the Eminence speak, and by her actions knew that she also heard.
'Child - Tiania - you must know this: if this man dies now - and if you are with him when he dies - then you may yourself be hurt even unto death.'
'Wise one, if he dies I will die also, of a broken heart! That I know, for I love him. It is why I must be with him, why I must try to help him.'
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |