"Richard Paul Russo - Just Drive, She Said" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russo Richard Paul)

After we ate, the woman said she needed a drink. I figured I could use one
too, so we went to the attached lounge and sat at a table in the back
corner, empty tables all around us. She asked me what I liked to drink,
and I told her Scotch. She ordered from the waiter, and when my drink came
it did taste an awful lot like Scotch--cheap Scotch, but Scotch
nevertheless. The woman was drinking something clear over ice.
"A trans-universal," the woman said. "Alcohol, coffee, and tobacco. Hotels
and motels are close, along with guns and cars, but alcohol, coffee, and
tobacco are almost everywhere."
Right. We drank. One drink, two drinks. Then a third. I was feeling it. We
didn't talk, but we had another drink. I didn't know about her, but I was
getting smashed.
"What's your name?" I asked. Drunk, I was feeling reckless, and it seemed
like a reckless question.
"It would sound like garbage." She paused. "Call me Victoria." Another
pause. "What's your name?"
"Robert."
"Robert." She nodded. "Robert, do you have any idea what's been happening
to you?"
I shook my head.
"Of course not. Ever heard of parallel universes?"
"Sure. As an idea, not something that actually exists."
"They exist. We've been moving from one to another." She signaled for two
more drinks, then looked at me for a minute before going on. "The console
in the car? It generates probability waves that slip us from one universe
to another."
The drinks came, and she drank half of hers immediately. It was a crazy
idea, but how else had I come to this place? We sat for a while in
silence, drinking. Actually, I kind of liked the idea of traveling between
universes. It beat hell out of sitting alone in an empty apartment all
weekend.
"Wait a second," I said. "How the hell do you know how to speak from one
place to another? You can't know all these languages."
She shook her head. "I don't." She tapped at the base of her skull. "But
this does. Batch of microchips planted in my head." Then she stretched out
her arms. "Robert, I'm wired. I've got a built-in receiver running through
my whole body. Every time I shift universes, my body pulls in all the
radio and television signals, whatever's out there, and the batch in my
head does the rest. In ten or fifteen minutes, I've got enough of the
language to get by. That's how I picked up your slang. And each time I
shift places, I shift languages. Or I can lock onto one, like I have with
yours." She paused. "I like being able to talk to you."
I looked at her for a minute.
"Why? Why are you traveling between universes? And who the hell is after
you?"
She didn't answer. She returned my gaze for a while, stood, then said,
"Let's get back to the room."
Without thinking, I opened my wallet to leave a tip. My paper money had
changed from green to the brightly colored bills I'd seen Victoria use.
"Just like the car," Victoria said. "Anything that's not alive." She took