"Lumley,.Brian.-.Titus.Crow.2.-.Transition.Of.Titus.Crow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

Impossible? Fantastic? Even I did not immediately understand. I, too, believed it impossible, believed that I had finally gone mad. Even now I do not completely understand the how of it, but I think I know the why:
I was hemmed in by Yog-Sothoth in space, enclosed in time. Driven finally to a frenzy of mental agitation surpassing any state of mind I had ever known before, torn between a number of choices of directions in which to flee, I had chosen two simultaneously. And I had hurled both the clock and myself in both of them! And wonder of wonders, the Lurker at the Threshold could only follow me in one! Bemused as I flashed both forward and back in time, Yog-Sothoth paused, and I took that chance to allow the split psyches of the clock and myself to flow back together again.
But in that last statement perhaps I mislead you. I brought the two materializations of man and vessel back into one phase, yes, and in so doing I repaired that rent I had made in the fabric of infinity; but the reparation was almost involuntary. It was simply a correction of something I knew could not be, made the instant after realizing that it could be and was. In any event, I then found myself free of the lord of that black demesne, but not for long.
The breathing space I had given myself, however short, was at least time in which to consider the implications of the foregoing phenomenon. Now, you must understand, Henri: it was not as if I had been two men in that brief instant of split personality. No, I had been one man, thinking as one man, reacting as one man, but existing in two places! A difficult concept even for me, but in that concept lay the seeds of my salvation.
If I could move in two temporal directions at once, into

both past and future simultaneously - is that a contradiction of terms? - could I also remain in the present simultaneously? Could I, in the present, move here and there simultaneously? And similarly in the future, and in the past? If this vessel of mine existed, however hypothet-ically, everywhere and everywhen, couldn't I with the application of my human psyche and superhuman mind -for indeed T3RE had given me a superhuman mind - be able to make the time-clock physically omnipresent?
I know what you are thinking, Henri, that only the gods are capable of such things. But didn't gods, the Elder Gods, build this craft of mine? Think of it: here was Yog-Sothoth, a prime member of the Ancient Ones, a being with the ability to reach any given location in the space-time of his own dimension almost instantaneously, but not several locations simultaneously! Only I had that ability, and in that I had the monster's measure.
Now, doubtless recovered from his initial surprise, he was coming for me again, walking the black voids on his pseudopod arms like some thinking slug of space. Well, if he wanted Titus Crow so badly he would have him! He would have one million Titus Crows, and each and every one of them capable of a further million branchings, enough to fill this entire dimension end to end and top to bottom - a superabundance of Titus Crows!
Throwing all caution to the wind then, uncaring of what cosmic calamities might accompany my next action, I achieved an instant and complete psychic meshing with my vessel. I became a sort of superhuman polyp as I commenced to divide in that instant, subdivide and divide again in all my manifestations to a point not far short of infinite. I became one mind governing a billion materializations, one psyche with the omnipresent awareness of a billion psyches. And in the next instant of time - the next few millions of years of time; for of course I had spread

my materializations through all of Yog-Sothoth's time-dimension - a number of things happened.
First, the Lurker at the Threshold curled up on himself, writhing horribly and visibly shrinking. His telepathic anguish filled me with a mental agony that was almost physical. Yog-Sothoth was mortally afraid! Confronted with an enigma as unthinkable as this, I yet found myself capable of compassion. More than that even, I felt a tearing, sickening, intensely burning empathy for the horror, exactly like that which I had known as a small boy when a friend of mine poured salt on a snail!
Second, even as I realized that the devastating explosion of my myriad manifestations had torn a gaping hole in the fabric of Yog-Sothoth's prison dimension, so a voice called to me from the other side of that awesome gap. The mental voice I had heard before in what I had taken to be dreams. I recognized the voice of the being in the great alcove behind the enigmatic drapes in the hall of crystal: Kthanid, guardian of my own guardian angel! 'This way, bom of woman, you, Titus Crow. You have opened the gate, now come through it!'
And finally, drawing back my own and the clock's countless identities into the one original id, into one body, one vessel, I flew as bidden out through that fantastic rent from which issued now a beam of purest light - that same beam you saw me use against the Wind-Walker, Henri, or at least a beam issuing from a similar source. This ray, so pure and dazzling white as to strike physically, like a solid shaft, flashed over and beyond my darting vessel at something behind me. In my scanner I saw Yog-Sothoth, bloated again to his former titanic loathesomeness, rushing to escape his interminable punishment. He fell back, stricken as the beam hit him. And as he fell the portal I had torn in his prison wall slammed shut again, closing on him and locking him in as securely as ever.

All of these things happened, Henri, and one more
thing. It was simply that flooding my entire being there
came the realization that at last I was one with the Elder
Gods, a lost sheep returned to the fold, a wanderer come
home. Home to Elysia!

PART FIVE 1
Elysia
(From de Marigny's recordings)
The voice of Kthanid, a supreme being, had called me from vile vortices of nether-existence to Elysia, a true garden of heaven! Elysia was home of the Elder Gods -of which Kthanid doubtless was one - and home, too, of the goddess whose telepathic guidance had succored me through a score of danger-fraught situations.
Elysia is not a planet, or if so it is the most tremendous colossus among worlds. There was, for example, no horizon that I ever saw. Even from on high I could testify to no visible curvature of the surface below me in the great misted distances. There were beautiful mountains, between and behind whose peaks the spires and columns of delicate cities clustered. Beyond those golden balconies and fretted crystal balustrades silver rivers and lakes tinkled; and far and away behind all this, misted by distance, yet more mountains thrust upward - and yet more fairy cities sparkled afar - but no horizon! Instead distance vanished in a pearly haze beneath skies that were high and blue. Flying machines soared or hovered in those skies or simply hung motionless. And through tufted drifting clouds golden creatures like benign, majestic dragons pulsed on wings of ivory and leather.
Some of these dragons were harnessed and bore proud riders through dizzy heights of air, riders whose scales or feathers or crests or iridescent skins set them aside from mere humanity, or rather, set them in a higher mold. These were the Elder Gods themselves, or their minions, and not one of them displayed the slightest interest in my

time-clock as I passed between them now on an arrow-straight course beyond an emerald ocean toward the steep spires of blue mountains.
Completely numb from head to foot - awash with awe and wonder and pinching myself to make sure this whole experience was not simply some fantastic dream - I made no motion, no mental effort to check the flight of the clock as it rushed out of the utter blackness of Yog-Sothoth's realm into this place. And yet now I perceived that I passed at a very leisurely pace over fields of green and gold, and dizzy aerial roadways that spread unsupported spans city to city like the gossamer threads of a
spider's web.
How could this be? How was it that while I had made
no conscious effort to slow the clock we yet paced the
skies so steadily? I reached mental fingers into my vessel's
motor areas, its psyche or mind, and recoiled as a sort of
slow, frozen electrical charge burned me! The time-clock
rejecting me? I tried again, but to no avail. My machine,
my time-clock, did not want to know me now, not at this
exact moment of time. I knew instinctively then that I
must not interfere, must make no attempt to pilot the
clock or guide its course. Nevertheless, out of sheer
human stubbornness, I tried yet a third time - only to
meet a blank mental wall. I was no longer master but
passenger, shut out of the engine room, not even allowed
on the bridge.
T3RE's words came back to me in that moment: 'You have a great journey before you, you and your time-clock ... he has told me it is so . . .' My clock had been like some lean hound, lost and wandering alone. I had found him, befriended him. We had roved and adventured together and now, by accident, we had come into his homeland. He knew and recognized the place. No use my hand on the leash, for he scented the hearth of home. If I

tried too hard to curb him then he might turn on me, for even now his mistress called him.
His mistress . . . and perhaps mine?