"Janet Morris - Crusaders In Hell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

Janet and Chris Morris

Copyright(c) 1987 by Paradise Productions

Sinday, Moanday, Duesday, Weptsday, Tearsday, Frightday, Sadderday ... the
weeks rolled on, tune without end, and the Devil rolled with the punches.
Usually.
Time in Hell is an endless series of infinitely divided instants, as Zeno of
Elea would have put it. Did put it, as a possible solution to the paradox of
Achilles and the .tortoise. Infinitely divisible or singularly indivisible;
either any moment, no matter how small, could be divided into an infinite
number of smaller moments, and so on ad infinitum, or not: these were the.
Original Choices in the quandary of time.
Now that Zeno had all the time in Hell to work out the solution to his
problem, it seemed not to matter. At least, not until the Devil came to call.
"Hello, Zeno," said the Devil who looked, that Sadderday, rather like an
Oxford don. Zeno hadn't been familiar with Oxford dons or atomic clocks before
he came to Hell. Now, he worked at the Infernal Observatory, in the department
of Apparent Time. Here he was in charge of the Diabolical Dialing Department,
which dispensed, by phone, the exact Satanic Mean Time to all callers.
When the phones were working, anyway. If the tape-machines were running
properly. And assuming that the Demonic Day and Dating Service wasn't screwing
around with the intervals between Paradise-rise and Paradise-set.
Which they were today. Or someone was, today. If the term 'day' had any
meaning-beyond that of a mathematical standard 24 + hours-when your hours were
on the fritz.
Zeno had known that something was amiss with the hourly rate of time's passage
in Hell for some ... time ... now. He hadn't known, however, that the Fault
finding Forum would decide that he was to blame which it must have. Otherwise,
why would His Infernal Majesty be visiting up here, on Mount Sinat-coming to
Zeno's monastic little cell in the observatory?
"Ah, s-s-sir," stammered the philosopher to the donnish Devil, a man in black
robes and a powdered wig. "D-d-do sit d-d-d-down." Zeno gestured to the sole
wooden chair that, with the single writing desk and feather pallet on the
floor, made up his cell's furnishings.
When the Devil crossed the cell to take his seat, a black, scaled and furred
creature with wings folded against its back scampered in after him. The door,
closing on its own, nearly caught the thing's tail. It hissed, its back arched
like a cat's, its tail fluffed to twice-normal size, and it looked Zeno
straight in the eye.
Then it opened its jaws (the size of a big cat's) and hissed again, showing
ivory fangs. Next, it pronked in mock-threat and bounded into the Devil's lap
with a rip of his robe.
The Devil winced and, from beneath his seated person, smoke began to rise from
the wooden chair in which he sat. Grabbing the familiar by its ruff, he
settled it roughly into his lap and said, "Greetings, Zeo of Elea. It seems we
have some sort of problem,"
"Yes sir. Your Satanic Majesty, we have."
"'Nick' will do, Zeno, at least until this crisis is over."
Zeno of Elea, whose sins had been the inventions of dialectic and the