"Roger Zelazny - Amber Chronicles, The 08 - Sign of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

That was how I'd gotten here. Through the card. . . .
A hand fell upon my shoulder and I turned. It belonged to Luke, who
grinned at me as he edged up to the bar for a refill.
"Great party, huh?" he said.
"Yeah, great. How'd you find this place?" I asked him.
He shrugged. "I forget. Who cares?"
He fumed away, a brief blizzard of .crystals swirling between us. The
Caterpillar exhaled a purple cloud. A blue moon was rising.
What is wrong with this picture? I asked myself.
I had a sudden feeling that my critical faculty had been shot off in
the war, because I couldn't focus on the anomalies I felt must be present. I
knew that I was caught up in the moment, but I couldn't see my way clear.
I was caught up. . .
I was caught. . . .
How?
Well. . . . It had all started when I'd shaken my own hand. No. Wrong.
That sounds like Zen and that's not how it was. The hand I shook emerged
from the space occupied by the image of myself on the card that went away.
Yes, that was it. . . . After a fashion.
I clenched my teeth. The music began again. There came a soft scraping
sound near to my hand on the bar. When I looked I saw that my tankard had
been refilled. Maybe I'd had too much already. Maybe that's what kept
getting in the way of my thinking. I fumed away. I looked off to my left,
past the place where the mural on the wall became the real landscape. Did
that make me a part of the mural? I wondered suddenly.
No matter. If I couldn't think here. . . . I began running . . . to the
left. Something about this place was messing with my head, and it seemed
impossible to consider the process while I was a part of it. I had to get
away in order to think straight, to determine what was going on.
I was across the bar and into that interface area where the painted
rocks and trees became three-dimensional. I pumped my arms as I dug in. I
head the wind without feeling it.
Nothing that lay before me seemed any nearer. I was moving, but Luke
began singing again.
I halted. I turned, slowly, because it sounded as if he were standing
practically beside me. He was. I was only a few paces removed from the bar.
Luke smiled and kept singing.
"What's going on?" I asked the Caterpillar. "You're looped in Luke's
loop," it replied. "Come again?" I said.
It blew a blue smoke ring, sighed softly, and said, "Luke's locked in a
loop and you're lost in the lyrics. 'That's all."
"How'd it happen?" I asked.
"I have no idea," it replied.
"Uh, how does one get unlooped?"
"Couldn't tell you that either."
I turned to the Cat, who was coalescing about his grin once again.
"I don't suppose you'd know-" I began.
"I saw him come in anD I saw you come in later," said the Cat,
smirking. "And even for this place your arrivals were somewhat . . .
unusual-leading me to conclude that at least one of you is associated with