"Andre Norton - Here Abide Monsters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

"Well, there might be fish in the lake. And there are blackberries-at least t
here were blackberries near our cabin. But this isn't our lake. We had better
go easy with what we have until we know the score."
Linda pulled at the knotted drawstring of the duffel bag. "I don't have much,
but I was taking two boxes of peanut brittle up to Jane, and a tin of Englis
h toffee-Jane loves peanut brittle and Ron has this thing about toffee-the ru
m-flavored kind. There're the melons and all that Coke and stuff back in the
jeep. But it's heavy to carry. I don't think we can pack it along with us. Ni
ck, where will we go? There're no houses here, and beyond there"-she pointed
to the far side of the lake-"it looks like more woods."
She was right. There was a dark rise of trees over there, matching that fro
m which they had just emerged. In fact, as far as Nick could see, though th
e lake curved farther south and that end of it was now hidden, the water wa
s ringed by forest. Suppose they did work through that, and they had no ide
a how many miles of it there were, what lay beyond? He had a hazy idea, fro
m a novel he had read concerning the early American wilderness, that such g
rowth could extend across a state with very few breaks.
"I don't know," he said frankly again. "But I'd rather be here in the open t
han under the trees. We can move down to the end of the lake-there's an outl
et-the Deep Run-there, if this is like our lake. Maybe we could work out of
the woods using that for a guide." He was rather proud of himself for rememb
ering that.
"If this lake is like the one you know," she commented. "Does it look like it,
really, Nick?"
He stood up, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun, which was hot no
w, but not as hot, he thought, as it might have been in their world. Slowly
he studied the part of the lake visible from here. It was hard to equate thi
s untouched, wild land with that where cabins and small docks were visible.
But he was almost certain the contours of the shoreline were not too dissimi
lar from those he had known since he was small. And he said so.
"Do you suppose," Linda asked, "that we have gone back in time-that we're
in the country that existed long before our people came into it? That-that
we may meet Indians?" She shot another wary glance at the woods.
"That would not explain the unicorn. Nor gray deer-" Nick indicated the pe
acefully grazing herd. "We could be in an alternate world." "He was unroll
ing the package of food from the store, but now his hands were still as he
thought of what he was saying. Alternate worlds, time travel-such things
did not exist! They could not-not for Nick Shaw a very ordinary person who
only wanted a quiet weekend for himself. He was Nick Shaw, he was alive,
yet this was happening! Unless, of course, he had really knocked himself o
ut back there with the bike and maybe now was in a hospital with a vivid d
ream-
"Alternate world? But unicorns-they never existed at all. They are only fair
y tales." Linda shook her head. "Nick!" For the second time her voice soared
up and she caught at him. "Nick, look there! Isn't that smoke?"
She pointed south beyond the deer and he followed her finger with his ga
ze. She was right! From somewhere in the brush beyond the meadowland a b
eacon of smoke was rising. And smoke could mean only one thing-people! T
ed and Ben-trapped here all those years! Nick's thought flew first to th
em. But company-company to help them, to let them know they were not alo