"Mary Rosenblum - Jumpers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

"The frogs told them to take a nap." The man's grin had grown thoughtful. "I don't know what they were
after. I recognized two of them. They work for Plantation security. Did you piss off the Plantation
cartel?"

"They wouldn't give me a visitor's permit."

"I don't think they piss off that easily." The man raised one eyebrow. "Well, maybe you know and maybe
you don't. I am Silvano. I live here."

"Joaquin Perrera." He gave his real name to see if Silvano recognized it. He didn't. "This is Plantation
forest, isn't it? It's illegal to live here."

"No kidding. Buy they only care about the sap. They don't look up."

Fungus grew from the gray bark of the trunk, shaped like fleshy, trumpet-shaped blossoms. "Could I
check my stuff?" Joaquin asked cautiously. "It's pretty specialized. Not worth much to anyone but me."

"Your friends thought it was worth something." Silvano smiled lazily.

"They were wrong." Joaquin stood up, no longer giving a damn about the drop. "Nobody gives a shit
about what I'm doing, so the equipment isn't worth a nuevo real, except as scrap."

"Everyone is worth something. So, what is your research?" Silvano's tone was lazy, but his eyes had gone
narrow and hard.

"I am looking for jumpers." Joaquin watched a small red and black wasp creep down the fungus-flower's
throat. "Do you know what dark matter is?" He sensed Silvano's silent head-shake. "It's stuff we can't
measure but we know is out there between the starsтАФtoo much of it. Nobody knows why, and nobody
but a handful of theoretical physicists gives a damn."

"Neither do I." Silvano shrugged.

In the fungus-flower's throat, the wasp seemed to be struggling. "There was this crazy physicist back in
the last century who worked with dark matter. He postulated that there are multiple universes, all
expanding together, like Chinese boxes nested inside one another. He theorized that all that dark matter
that shouldn't be there is from another universe beyond ours, and is falling through our own universe.
Kicked out by jumpers," he said softly, the words echoing in his pounding head. "Perhaps people are тАж
escaping from their universe. Leaving it. Jumping. And we catch a glimpse of them as they fall through our
universe, but since they're not part of our universe, we see them as dark matter." The wasp had escaped.
It poised on the thick orange lip of the fungoid throat, shaking its wings in a dazed fashion.

"You want to find something that isn't thereтАФbecause maybe that means there are people jumping out of
other worlds?" Silvano's dark eyes were unreadable in the dim light. "Boy, you are indeed insane. I hope
someone loves you enough to pay for you."

"I am not a boy," Joaquin said softly. "Doesn't it mean anything to you? That there might be other
universes besides ours? That the beings there can тАж escape?"

"There is no real escape." Silvano stuck out a finger to the wasp, and it climbed onto his hand. "The