"Michael Swanwick - Mother Grasshopper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

We walked to Tylersburg, Rutledge, and Uniontown and took wagons to
Shoemakersville, Confluence, and South Gibson. Booked onto steam trains for
Mount Lebanon, Mount Bethel, Mount Aetna, and Mount Nebo and diesel trains to
McKeesport, Reinholds Station, and Broomall. Boarded buses to Carbondale,
Feasterville, June Bug, and Lincoln Falls. Caught commuter flights to Paradise,
Nickel Mines, Niantic, and Zion.

The time passed quickly.

Then one shocking day my magician announced that he was going home.

"Home?" I said. "What about your work?"

"Our work, Daniel," he said gently. "I expect you'll do as good a job as ever I
did." He finished packing his few possessions into a carpetbag.

"You can't!" I cried.

With a wink and a sad smile, he slipped out the door.

For a time -- long or short, I don't know -- I sat motionless, unthinking,
unseeing. Then I leaped to my feet, threw open the door, and looked up and down
the empty street. Blocks away, toward the train station, was a scurrying black
speck.

Leaving the door open behind me, I ran after it.

I just missed the afternoon express to Lackawanna. I asked the stationmaster
when was the next train after it. He said tomorrow. Had he seen a tall man
carrying a carpetbag, looking thus and so? Yes, he had. Where was he? On the
train to Lackawanna. Nothing more heading that way today. Did he know where I
could rent a car? Yes, he did. Place just down the road.

Maybe I'd've caught the magician if I hadn't gone back to the room to pick up my
bags. Most likely not. At Lackawanna station I found he'd taken the bus to
Johnstown. In Johnstown, he'd moved on to Erie and there the trail ran cold. It
took me three days hard questioning to pick it up again.

For a week I pursued him thus, like a man possessed.

Then I awoke one morning and my panic was gone. I knew I wasn't going to catch
my magician anytime soon. I took stock of my resources, counted up what little
cash-money I had, and laid out a strategy. Then I went shopping. Finally, I hit
the road. I'd have to be patient, dogged, wily, but I knew that, given enough
time, I'd find him.

Find him, and kill him too.
The trail led me to Harper's Ferry, at the very edge of the oculus. Behind was
civilization. Ahead was nothing but thousands of miles of empty chitin-lands.