"Moorcock, Michael - The Blood Red Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

Again he began to move uneasily about the great cabin. Again he volunteered a suggestion.

'We don't know all the directions in which our own universe moves,' he said. 'It may also, for all we know, have a "sideways" movement through the dimensions at an angle different from the Shifter. This would explain to some extent any inconsistency in the length of time the system stays in our space-time continuum.'

Talfryn shook his head. 'I've never been able to grasp any of those theories about the system. I don't even understand your ability to sense its approach. I know that, with training, space sensers can locate planets and even smaller bodies in normal space-time, but I wasn't aware that they could sense things outside, beyond, in different dimensions - wherever it is.'

'Normally they can't,' Renark said, 'but many who have probed the perimeter of space outside the galaxy have mentioned that they have sensed something else, something not in keeping with any recognised natural laws. Others have had the illusion of sensing suns and worlds within the galaxy - where suns and worlds just can't be! This has given rise to the theory of the "multi-verse", the multiнdimensional universe containing dozens of different universes, separated from each other by unknown dimensions...'

He paused. How could he explain in calm, logical words the sense of apartness, of alienness, he had received? How could he describe that shock, that experience which contradicted all he accepted with every sense he possessed, something that struck at the id, the ego, the emotions - everything?

He opened his mouth, trying to find words. But the words did not exist. The nearest way of expressing what he felt was to give vent to a shout of horror, agony - triumph. He didn't feel inclined to try.

So he shut his mouth and continued to pace the cabin, running his ugly hand over the firing arm of the big anti-neutron gun which had never been used. It was a savage weapon and he hoped there would never be need to use it.

Nuclear weapons of any sort made him uncomfortable. His strange sixth sense was as aware of the disruption of atoms as it was of their presence in natural state. It was an experience close to agony to sense the disruptive blast of atomic weapons. The anti-neutron cannon, beaming particles of anti-matter, was an even more terrible experience for him.

Once, as a child, he had been close to the area of a multi-megaton bomb explosion and his whole mind had blanked out under the strain of the experience. It had taken doctors a year to pull him back to sanity. Now he was stronger, better co-ordinated - but it was still not pleasant to be in a space flight.

Also, he loathed violence, considering it was the easy way out and, like many easy ways out, not a way out at all but only continuation of a vicious circle. So whenever possible he avoided it.

However, he was prepared, in this case, to use it - if it meant using it against anything in the Shifter which attempted to stop him in his avowed objective.

Renark had geared himself to drive towards one aim, and one only. Already he was driving towards it and nothing - nobody - would stop him. He was dedicated, he was fanatical - but he was going to get results if that was possible. If it wasn't possible, then he'd die trying to make it possible.

Soon, now - very soon - the Shifter would enter their area of space. He was going there. The Shifter offered the only chance in the universe of supplying him with the information he needed.

He glanced back at Talfryn, who was still studying the records.

'Any clearer?' he asked.

Talfryn shook his head and grinned.

'I can just understand how the Shifter orbits through dimensions hitherto unknown to us, in the same way as we orbit through time and space, but the implications are too big for me. I'm bewildered. I'm no physicist.'

'Neither am I,' Renark pointed out. 'If I were I might not be so affected by the Shifter. For instance, there's something peculiar about any system comprised of a G-type binary star and eleven planets all equidistant from it - something almost artificial. If it is artificial - how did it happen?'

'Maybe it's the other way about,' Talfryn suggested vaguely. 'Maybe the planets all being the same distance away from the parent suns has something to do with the peculiar nature of the system. If they area natural freak, could this have caused the Shifter's orbit?'

Renark nodded. He thought for a moment before he said:

'If you take for granted that Time is cyclic in accordance with the other known laws of the universe - although, as you well know, my own experiments seem to prove that there is more than one particular time flow operating in our own universe - if you take that for granted, however, we can describe the rest by means of circles.'

He walked to the chair where he had left his stylus and pad, picked them up and moved over the chart table.

'The Shifter orbits this way' - he drew a circle - 'whereas we progress this way.' He drew a half-circle cutting horizontally through the first circle.

'Imagine that we have a finite number of space-time continua each with some mutually shared laws.' He drew a number of other half-circles below and above the first. They're all, like us, travelling this way. There is no contact between us but we exist side by side without being aware of each other's presence, all revolving in different sets of dimensions.'

Talfryn nodded.