"Roger Zelazny - Amber Chronicles, The 06 - Trumps of Doom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

I rose, went to the bedroom, fetched a blanket, and covered Julia with
it. Mechanically, I wiped my fingerprints from the fallen doorknob as I
began my search of the apartment.
I found them on the mantelpiece between the clock and a stack of
paperbacks dealing with the occult. The moment I touched them and felt their
coldness I realized that this was even more serious than I had thought. They
had to be the thing of mine she'd had that I would be needing-only they were
not really mine, though as I riffled through I recognized them on one level
and was puzzled by them on another. They were cards, Trumps, like yet unlike
any I had ever seen before.
It was not a complete deck. Just a few cards, actually, and strange. I
slipped them into my side pocket quickly when I heard the siren. Time for
solitaire later.
I tore down the stairs and out the back door, encountering no one. Fido
still lay where he had fallen and all the neighborhood dogs were discussing
it. I vaulted fences and tram
pled flowerbeds, cutting through backyards on my way over to the side
street where I was parked.
Minutes later I was miles away, trying to scrub the bloody pawprints
from my memory.,

CHAPTER 2

I drove away from the bay until I came to a quiet, well-treed area. I
stopped the car and got out and walked.
After a long while I located a small, deserted park. I seated myself on
one of the benches, took out the Trumps and studied them. A few seemed half
familiar and the rest were totally puzzling. I stared too long at one end
seemed to hear a siren song. I put them down. I did not recognize the style.
This was extremely awkward.
I was reminded of the story of a world-famous toxicologist who
inadvertently ingested a poison for which there was no antidote. The
question foremost in his mind was, Had he taken a lethal dose? He looked it
up in a classic textbook that he himself had written years before. According
to his own book he had had it. He checked another, written by an equally
eminent professional. According to that one he had taken only about half the
amount necessary to do in someone of his body mass. So he sat down and
waited, hoping he'd been wrong.
I felt that way because I am an expert on these things. I thought that
I knew the work of everyone who might be capable of producing such items. I
picked up one of the cards, which held a peculiar, almost familiar
fascination for me-depicting a small grassy point jutting out into a quiet
lake, a sliver of something bright,glistening, unidentifiable, off to the
right. I exhaled heavily upon it, fogging it for an instant, and struck it
with my fingernail. It rang like a glass bell and flickered to life. Shadows
swam and pulsed as the scene inched into evening. I passed my hand over it
and it grew still once again-back to lake, grasses, daytime.
Very distant. Time's stream flowed faster there in relationship to my
present situation. Interesting.
I groped for an old pipe with which I sometimes indulge myself, filled