"Roger Zelazny - Amber 06 - Trumps Of Doom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

Trumps Of Doom
Chapter 1

It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you. But
it was April 30, and of course it would happen as it always did. It had taken
me a while to catch on, but now I at least knew when it was coming. In the
past, I'd been too busy to do anything about it. But my job was finished now.
I'd only stayed around for this. I felt that I really ought to clear the
matter up before I departed. I got out of bed, visited the bathroom, showered,
brushed my teeth, et cetera. I'd grown a beard again, so I didn't have to
shave. I was not jangling with strange apprehensions, as I had been on that
April 30 three years ago when I'd awakened with a headache and a premonition,
thrown open the windows, and gone to the kitchen to discover all of the gas
burners turned on and flameless. No. It wasn't even like the April 30 two
years ago in the other apartment when I awoke before dawn to a faint smell of
smoke to learn that the place was on fire. Still, I stayed out of direct line
of the light fixtures in case the bulbs were filled with something flammable,
and I flipped all of the switches rather than pushing them. Nothing untoward
followed these actions.
Usually, I set up the coffee maker the night before with a timer. This
morning, though, I didn't want coffee that had been produced out of my sight.
I set a fresh pot going and checked my packing while I waited for it to brew.
Everything I valued in this place resided in two medium-sized crates -
clothing, books, paintings, some instruments, a few souvenirs, and so forth. I
sealed the cases. A change of clothing, a sweatshirt, a good paperback, and a
wad of traveler's checks went into the backpack. I'd drop my key off at the
manager's on the way out, so he could let the movers in. The crates would go
into storage.
No jogging for me this morning.
As I sipped my coffee, passing from window to window and pausing beside
each for sidelong surveys of the streets below and the buildings across the
way (last year's attempt had been by someone with a rifle), I thought back to
the first time it had happened, seven years ago. I had simply been walking
down the street on a bright spring afternoon when an oncoming truck had
swerved, jumped the curb, and nearly combined me with portions of a brick
wall. I was able to dive out of the way and roll. The driver never regained
consciousness. It had seemed one of those freak occurrences that occasionally
invade the lives of us all.
The following year to the day, however, I was walking home from my lady
friend's place late in the evening when three men attacked me - one with a
knife, the other two with lengths of pipe - without even the courtesy of first
asking for my wallet.
I left the remains in the doorway of a nearby record store, and while I
thought about it on the way home it did not strike me until the following day
that it had been the anniversary of the truck crash. Even then, I dismissed it
as an odd coincidence. The matter of the mail bomb that had destroyed half of
another apartment the following year did cause me to begin wondering whether
the statistical nature of reality might not be under a strain in my vicinity
at that season. And the events of subsequent years served to turn this into a
conviction.