"Zelazny, Roger - Damnation Alley" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

". . . And in the only legitimate job you ever held, you were the only man who'd make the mail run to Albuquerque. There've only been a few others since you were fired."
"That wasn't my fault."
"You were the best man on the Seattle run, too," Denton continued. "Your supervisor said so. What I'm trying to say is that, of anybody we could pick, you've probably got the best chance of getting through. That's why we've been indulgent with you, but we can't afford to wait any longer. It's yes or no right now, and you'll leave within the hour if it's yes."
Tanner raised his cuffed hands and gestured toward the window.
"In all this crap?" he asked.
"The cars can take this storm," said Denton.
"Man, you're crazy."
"People are dying even while we're talking," said Denton.
"So a few more ain't about to make that much difference. Can't we wait till tomorrow?"
"No! A man gave his life to bring us the news! And we've got to get across the continent as fast as possible now, or it won't matter! Storm or no storm, the cars leave flow! Your feelings on the matter don't mean a good goddamn in the face of this! All I want out of you, Hell, is One word: Which one will it be?"
"I'd like something to eat. I haven't . . ."
"There's food in the car. What's your answer?"
Hell stared at the dark window.
"Okay," he said, "I'll run Damnation Alley for you. I won't leave without a piece of paper with some writing on it, though."
"I've got it here."
Denton opened a drawer and withdrew a heavy cardboard envelope, from which he extracted a piece of stationery bearing the Great Seal of the nation of California. He stood and rounded the desk and handed it to Hell Tanner.
Hell studied it for several minutes, then said, "This says that if I make it to Boston I receive a full pardon for every criminal action I've ever committed within the nation of California . . ."
"That's right."
"Does that include ones you might not know about now, if someone should come up with them later?"
"That's what it says, Hell, 'every criminal action.'"
"Okay, you're on, fat boy. Get these bracelets off me and show me my car."
The man called Denton moved back to his seat on the other side of his desk.
"Let me tell you something else, Hell," he said. "If you try to cop out anywhere along the rouL, the other drivers have their orders. They will open fire on you and burn you into little bitty ashes. Get the picture?"
"I get the picture," said Hell. "I take it I'm supposed to do them the same favor?"
"That is correct."
"Good enough. That might be fun."
"I thought you'd like it."
"Now, if you'll unhook me, I'll make the scene for you."
"Not till I've told you what I think of you," Denton said.
"Okay, if you want to waste time calling me names, while people are dying..."
"Shut up! You don't care about them, and you know it! I just want to tell you that I think you are the lowest, most reprehensible human being I have ever encountered. You have killed men and raped women. You once gouged out a man's eyes, just for fun. You've been indicted twice for pushing dope, and three times as a pimp. you're a drunk and a degenerate, and I don't think you've had a bath since the day you were born. You and your hoodlums terrorized decent people when they were trying to pull their lives together after the war. You stole from them and you assaulted them, and you extorted money and the necessaries of life with the threat of physical violence. I wish you had died in the Big Raid that night, like all the rest of them. You are not a human being, except from a biological standpoint. You have a big dead spot somewhere inside you where other people have something that lets them live together in society and be neighbors. The only virtue that you possess, if you want to call it that, is that your reflexes may be a little faster, your muscles a little stronger, your eye a bit more wary than the rest of us, so that you can sit behind a wheel and drive through anything that has a way through it. It is for this that the nation of California is willing to pardon your inhumanity if you will use that one virtue to help rather than hurt. I don't approve. I don't want to depend on you, because you're not the type. I'd like to see you die in this thing, and while I hope that somebody makes it through, I hope that it will be somebody else. I hate your bloody guts. You've got your pardon now. The car's ready. Let's go."
Denton stood, at a height of about five feet, eight inches, and Tanner stood and looked down at him and chuckled.
"I'll make it," he said. "If that citizen from Boston made it through and died, I'll make it through and live. I've been as far as the Missus Hip."
"You're lying."
"No, I ain't, either, and if you ever find out that's Straight, remember I got this piece of paper in my pocket, 'every criminal action,' and like that. It wasn't easy, and I was lucky, too. But I made it that far, and nobody else you know can say that. So I figure that's about halfway, and I can make the other half if I can get that far."
They moved toward the door.
"I don't like to say it and mean it," said Denton, "but good luck. Not for your sake, though."
"Yeah, I know."
Denton opened the door, and, "Turn him loose," he said. "He's driving."
The officer with the pistol handed it to the man who had given Tanner the cigarettes, and he fished in his pockets for the key. When he found it, he unlocked the cuffs, stepped back, and hung them at his belt; and, "I'll come with you," said Denton. "The motor pool is downstairs."
They left the office, and Mrs. Fiske opened her purse and took a rosary into her hands and bowed her head. She prayed for Boston, and she prayed for the soul of its departed messenger. She even threw in a couple for Hell Tanner.

The bell was ringing. Its one note, relentless, interminable, filled the square. In the distance, there were other bell notes, and together they formed a demon symphony that had been going on since the dawn of time, or at least seemed as if it had.
Franklin Harbershire, President of Boston, swallowed a mouthful of cold coffee and relit his cigar. For the sixth time he picked up the fatality report, read the latest figures, threw it down agath.
His desk was covered with papers covered with figures covered with ashes, and it was no good.
After seventy-six hours without sleep, nothing seemed to make sense. Least of all the attempt to quantify the death rate.
He leaned back in his leather chair, squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again. From the inside they had been like wounds, red, swimming red.
He was aware that the figures were by now obsolete. They had also been inaccurate in the first place, for there bad to be many undiscovered dead, he knew.
The bells told him that his nation was sinking slowly into the blackness that always lies a half-inch below life, waiting for the crust to weaken.
"Why don't you go home, Mr. President? Or at least take a nap? We'll watch things for you. . .