"03 - The Far Shore of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pohl Frederick)

FREDERIK POHL

THE FAR SHORE OF TIME



This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE FAR SHORE OF TIME Copyright (c) 1999 by Frederik Pohl
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
This book is printed on acid-free paper. Edited by James Frenkel
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor Books on the World Wide Web: www.tor.com
Tor* is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC ISBN 0-312-86618-6
First Edition: July 1999
Printed in the United States of America


For Betty Anne, as always


PART ONE

BEFORE



CHAPTER ONE

We were actually on our way home when it happened. We didn't have any doubt that that was where we were going, and we were, boy, ready. We had been months and months in the captivity of a weird alien creature from another world, the one we called Dopey. He was alien, all right. He looked sort of like a large chicken with a kitten's face and a peacock's tail, and he had kidnapped the lot of us-snatched us right out of the old Starlab astronomical satellite and thrown us into some kind of space-traveling machine that whisked us from hereto some unbelievably distant there in no time at all. And there was where Dopey kept us, in one damn miserably uncomfortable prison or another, on this unpleasant planet we had never heard of before.
That was a truly nasty experience, but, the way it looked to us at the time, it was over! Against the odds, we had escaped! Our chance to get away came when some rival gang of nonhumans, these ones called the "Horch," invaded our prison planet. In the confusion we fought our way to the matter-transmitter thing, and jumped in, and were on our way home. I was the last to climb into the machine. . . .
And I saw the pale lavender flash that meant it was working. ...
And I came out again.. . .
But I wasn't home at all. The place I was in didn't look at all like Starlab. A pair of those silvery-spidery Horch wheeled fighting machines that had been trying to kill us were standing there, not half a dozen meters away. This time they weren't shooting at me, though. If they had been, I couldn't have shot back, because something I couldn't see grabbed me from behind-no, enveloped me, in an all-points hug that didn't let me move a muscle-as I heard the machine's door open again.
Dopey spilled out on top of me, plume all ruffled, little cat eyes glaring around in terror. He took one look at the machines and began to shake. Something hard and painful was pressing behind my right ear. I managed to yell a question at Dopey; and just before the lights went out he sobbed an answer: "Agent Dannerman, we are in the hands of the Horch."
And that was the nastiest, the very nastiest, moment of all.



PART TWO
Interrogation



CHAPTER TWO

When I woke up I was lying on a hard, glassy floor. My head felt as though someone had taken a baseball bat to it.
I kept my eyes prudently closed for a moment. I listened, trying to figure out where I was and what I was doing there. All I heard was an occasional skritchy-tinkly sound, like an incomplete set of cheap wind chimes, and now and then a faint whir that sounded a little like skate wheels on a hard floor.