"Zelazny, Roger - Amber 08 - Sign Of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

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 magic."
I nodded.
"Your own comings and goings might give one pause," I observed.
"I keep my paws to myself," he replied. "Which is more than Luke can say."
"What do you mean?"
"He's caught in a contagious trap."
"How does it work?" I asked.
But he was gone again, and this time the grin went too.
Contagious trap? That seemed to indicate that the problem was Luke's, and
that I had been sucked into it in some fashion. This felt right, though it still
gave me no idea as to what the problem was or what I might do about it.
I reached for my tankard. If I couldn't solve my problem, I might as well
enjoy it. As I took a slow sip I became aware of a strange pair of pale, burning
eyes gazing into my own. I hadn't noticed them before, and the thing that made
them strange was that they occupied a shadowy comer of the mural across the room
from me--that, and the fact that they were moving, drifting slowly to my left.
It was kind of fascinating, when I lost sight of the eyes but was still
able to follow whatever it was from the swaying of grasses as it passed into the
area toward which I had been headed earlier. And far, far off to my
right--beyond Luke--I now detected a slim gentleman in a dark jacket, palette
and brush in hand, who was slowly extending the mural. I took another sip and