"Zelazny, Roger - Amber Short Stories 02 - Salesman's Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

The Saleman's Tale from Amberzine #6 February, 1994
by Roger Zelazny




Glad I'd planned on leaving Merlin in the Crystal Cave
for a long while. Glad he didn't stay the entire time.
As I interrupted our trumped conversation by kicking
over my glass of iced tea and shouting "Shit! I
spilled it--" I turned over the Trump of Doom in my
good hand.

Junkyard Forest. Nice sketch, that. Though it didn't
matter what it depicted, which is why I'd had Merlin
fan the cards face down and had drawn one at random.
That was for show, to confuse the Pattern. All of them
led to places within spitting distance of the Crystal
Cave--which had been the real reason for their
existence in the first place. Their only purpose had
been to draw Merlin into the Cave's orbit, at which
point a blue crystal warning system was to have
alerted me. The plan was for me to get there in a
hurry and find a way to make him a prisoner.

Unfortunately, I hadn't gotten the message when he'd
drawn the Sphinx to escape from mom. Her neurotoxins
had canceled a necessary trigger signal from his
nervous system--just one of the many ways she's messed
up my plans without half-trying. Didn't matter,
though, in the long run. I got Merlin there, anyway.
Only... everything changed after that.

"Luke! You fool!" The Pattern's message blasted
through me like the closing number at a rock concert.
But the Junkyard Forest had already come clear, and I
was trumping out, before the Pattern realized that tea
rather than my blood was flowing upon it.

I rose to my feet as the Pattern faded, and I moved
forward amid the rusty sawblade bushes, the twisted
girder trees, the gaily colored beds of broken
bottles. I began to run, blood spilling from the
slashed palm of my left hand. I didn't even take the
time to bind it. Once the Pattern recovered from its
shock and discovered itself undamaged, it was going to
begin scanning Shadow for me, for the others. They'd