"Jody Lynn Nye - Muchness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nye Jody Lynn)
No more pretty pictures, no more imaginary wolves, Valerie vowed. I am in charge. I will get my job
done, and get it over with.
But something was not quite right.
"If I am in full control of this reality," she said out loud, staring at the humpbacked path before her,
"then why can't I make those footprints go away, too?"
The trail led away from her. Huge, dark, triangular pads, with five, no, eight toes on each foot. Small,
three-cornered depressions in the plastic ground at the front of each toe suggested long, sharp claws.
What on Earth was out there? Fitzhugh certainly didn't say anything about the space in between the
fields being inhabited by anything. For all the scientists knew, it was nothing more than a postulatum, a
pause between disappearing into one mirror and coming out of the next. She knew now that that theory
wasn't true, but certainly there had never been evidence of other beings, with huge feet and long claws.
She measured her foot against one of the prints, and found it barely covered one of the toe-marks. The
creature must be enormous! She wished she knew anything about tracking, to tell whether the beast
ahead of her went on four feet, or two, and whether its walking upright was a good thing or not.
To her dismay, Valerie realized the track was going in the same direction she was headed. She saw no
reason to court danger. She veered away to the left at approximately thirty degrees to the muchness and
trotted forward through the polychromatic hummocks and hillocks, keeping an eye open.
To her horror, the steps came around to meet herтАФnot the tracks, but new footprints. They formed one
after another, their pace matching her heartbeat. She skidded to a stop as the gray terrain buckled under
her feet, then sent a hill hurtling upward between her and the invisible menace. The prints pattered
across what would have been her path and trotted away. The landscape itself had saved her from
encountering whatever it was.
As soon as the invisible beast had created enough distance between them, Valerie slipped around the
Muchness by Jody Lynn Nye
convenient hummock and trotted in the opposite direction, but not before patting her rescuer gratefully.
"Thanks." Was it just her imagination, or did the hummock rear against her palm like a friendly cat?
Her equilibrium began to restore itself. Valerie cast about for the feeling of muchness. The sensation of
saturation manifested itself not in her eyes or nose or ears, but somewhere between them inside her head.
The receiver site was close. Another dozen paces or so, and she would be in Chicago.
As she neared her exit point, she understood exactly what Clyde meant by a sensation of "more." The
glow suffusing her body intensified, crackling with an opalescent St. Elmo's fire. Valerie sustained a
similar elation, her mood improving with every step. Suddenly, she slammed into an invisible
obstruction. She was propelled five paces back and flat onto her rump.
Valerie sprang up, fists balled by her sides, ready to defend herself.
Before her, something began to take shape. It was only a transparent outline at first, but swiftly limned
in details like a chalk picture or a piece of computer art composed of hideous green and brown scales.
Not only did it have four legs, as she had at first suspected, but it walked upright, too. Six limbs. And
wings. And thousands upon thousands of fangs, rows of them. It snarled fearsomely, lowering its deadly
jaws within inches of Valerie's face. She cringed, spun on her heel, and began to run. One of its long
arms stretched so that a claw headed her off. She revolved three quarters of a turn, saw only ugliness
most of the way round, then dashed toward the only opening, which was fast closing because another
claw had entered the picture from the other side.
The ground, which had been her friend before, lowered her swiftly out of the circle of the beast's arms,
but the monster stuck down an eight-clawed foot, catching Valerie under her bottom just before she sank
out of reach and propelling her upward. The beast caught her against its scaly chest and snorted in her
face. She struggled against the steel-strong muscles, too angry to be terrified. Its breath smelled of
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |