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

"What do you think I am?" She moved forward, lifted slightly, then lowered
herself onto me, warm and moist. She smiled. "Just drive," she said.
I drove.

She wouldn't talk about where we were going, or why. I had the feeling she
didn't have any particular destination in mind, that she was just shifting
from one universe to another at random, trying to lose her pursuer. For a
few days, it seemed to work.
I got used to the changes. Or rather, to the idea of change. Each day we
made at least one shift, usually two. Once we made three, which was a
mistake--I got sick all over the front seat and nearly ran the car into a
concrete channel on the side of the road used by people on cable-powered
skateboards. After that, we shared the driving, and stuck to two shifts a
day.
Everything changed--the car, our clothes, money. Language changed,
occasionally becoming so close to English that I could understand it
again, but usually becoming completely unintelligible. And the world
around us changed.
Once we emerged into a domed city, buildings reaching to the dome itself
and through it, jutting into the open sky above. Another city was a maze
of narrow roadways with hundreds of footbridges above the streets,
connecting the stone buildings in a vast, chaotic network of bent and
twisted metal. And once we came out onto a cracked and potholed concrete
road in the middle of a dry, gutted wasteland, flat ruins for miles in all
directions, no signs at all of life. We shifted out of there as soon as we
could.
We spent several hours a day on the road. Sometimes we shifted at lower


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speeds, which was easier on me, but which, she said, made for smaller
jumps that were easier to track. And though she could make a second shift
as soon as fifteen or twenty minutes after the first, Victoria liked to
put as much actual distance between shifts as possible. Left a tougher
trail to follow, she said.
We spent much of the time driving in silence, but we did talk a little. I
talked about my own world, my universe, my life--which wasn't much. I was
in charge of the Documents Department of a large corporate law firm. I
liked the job itself, but working for asshole attorneys all day long had
become almost unbearable. And my personal life was hardly fulfilling. But
I talked about it all, and once in a while Victoria would talk about what
it was like traveling between universes.
"Do you ever stop running?" I asked once. "I mean, how long can you keep
it up? Don't you ever get a chance to just stop for a while?"
Victoria nodded. "When I've made enough shifts over a long period of time,
it gives me distance. I get a few days, a couple of weeks. I'll just stay
in one place for a while, relax, or maybe do something to pick up some
money. But eventually I have to leave, start shifting again."