"Mike Resnick - Pearly Gates" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

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THE ADVENTURE OF THE PEARLY GATES


by Mike Resnick








_"...An examination by experts leaves little doubt that a
personal contest between the two men ended, as it could hardly
fail to end in such a situation, in their reeling over, locked in
each other's arms. Any attempt at recovering the bodies was
absolutely hopeless, and there, deep down in that dreadful
cauldron of swirling water and seething foam, will lie for all
time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the
law of their generation..."
-- The Final Problem_

* * *

It was most disconcerting. One moment I was tumbling over the
falls at Reichenbach, my arms locked around Professor Moriarty,
and the next moment I seemed to be standing by myself in a bleak,
gray, featureless landscape.
I was completely dry, which seemed not at all surprising,
though there was no reason why it should not have been. Also, I
had felt my leg shatter against the rocks as we began our plunge,
and yet I felt no pain whatsoever.
Suddenly I remembered Moriarty. I looked around for him, but
he was nowhere to be seen. There was an incredibly bright light up
ahead, and I found myself drawn to it. What happened next I can
remember but hazily; the gist of it is that I found myself in, of
all places, Heaven. (No one told me that I was in Heaven, but when
one eliminates the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth...and Professor Moriarty's absence
was quite enough to convince me that I was not in Hell.)