"Jody Lynn Nye - Muchness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nye Jody Lynn)

The humming carrier around her was still intact, but it felt as if it might dissolve at any moment.
Whatever had generated the feeling of muchness had pulled her here by mistake. Perhaps this was the
destination of some of the lab rats that had never come back to Oxford.
A man looked up from his glass as the bartender leaned over to pour. His eyes widened as he saw the
small blonde scientist in her protective pinafore, and he blanched.
"Never mind. I've had enough," he said, pushing the glass away with haste. He threw a few bills onto the
bar and hurried out the door into the midday hubbub.
Valerie took a moment to get her bearings, and plunged back into the field. It closed around her again,
almost nipping at her heels.
That experience was worrying. Valerie wondered what would happen if she stepped out of the field in
the wrong place and let the static dissipate. Would the resulting inequality tear her apart? The swirls
obligingly showed gaping red and white and rotted brown. She felt ill, but her stomach was somewhere
above her head and behind her about six yards. At such a remove, it didn't interfere greatly with her
thought processes.
She remembered something else Fitzhugh had said just before she went in. In the absence of normal
sensation, her brain would play out images to have something upon which to focus. In other words, she'd
see what she expected to see, or wanted to see. Could she create her own scenery, to amuse herself while
trying to find the correct receiver? She homed in on the next feeling of muchness, then, drawing on
childhood memories of a family holiday in the New Forest, filled the empty spaces around her with the
images of a pleasant beech and oak forest, with a hard-packed dirt path underneath her feet winding its
way amidst the trees toward her destination.
For the first time, distinct sounds arose around her: birdsong, the rustle of deer in the neighboring
undergrowth, the creaking of old fences, the light whistle of wind, the snap of twigs and leaves. Valerie
enjoyed her make-believe world, sustaining it as best she could, pummeling her memory for details of
the long walks she and her father had taken. She populated her forest with shy deer, the odd fox, a wild
sow and her piglets. A pair of equestrians paced her on a parallel path at her left hand, posting up and
down on their tiny saddles, tightly braided steeds trotting along at a businesslike pace. They soon
crossed in front of her, and departed to the right. Their hoofbeats resounded hollowly, and faded away to

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 Muchness by Jody Lynn Nye

a distant sound like heartbeats. Valerie waded the shallow water of a ford, hearing the pum-pum, pum-
pum, pum-pum long after they were out of sight.
The noise persisted, taking on a haunting quality. Valerie wondered if the horsemen were returning, but
it no longer sounded precisely like hoofbeats. The forest closed overhead, forming an arch of long, thin
fingers of black. Valerie started to fancy she could see red eyes aglow in the underbrush. Her heart
began to beat with the rhythmic pounding. Suddenly terrified, she broke into a run. Branches opened and
closed, steering her into paths that were ever narrower and darker. Her world was closing around her,
driving her at its will, away from the muchness, away from sanity and safety. Twigs tore at her hair and
white dress. She crossed her arms tightly and bent her head to protect her face as she ran. A lonely howl
rose from the woods, and she shrieked in terror.
Her own shout made her come to her senses. Valerie skidded to a halt, and forcefully put aside the fairy-
tale fear. It had crept up from her subconscious with the good memories, and she would banish it.
"This is my reality!" Valerie shouted. One by one, the pairs of red eyes blinked out like lights switching
off. The black branches receded, melting away into the usual gray-ness. Her beautiful, green forest
opened at the top like curtains drawing back, falling away, dissolving, until she stood there alone, a
small, determined figure in white.
"There," she said firmly, planting satisfied fists on her hips. Connor said they'd chosen her because she
was sane, didn't he? She'd cleared away all the holiday folderol, and nothing remained but the gray