"Chalker, Jack L - G.o.d. Inc. 2 - The Shadow Dancers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

is drawn, straight up and down, just a little above the floor, in a kind of
blue-white light. It just starts from nowhere, then draws itself to maybe
fifteen or twenty feet high. When they're happy with it, they throw more
switches and more lines start kinda branchin' off from the other line. Like half
the line just falls away and then you have an L, then another from it to make a
squared-off U and finally a top, so you got this big square of light.
Then the whole square slips off and you got two sides, then it splits again, and
again, till you got a cube of light just sittin' there. Then it really starts
goin' fast, foldin' and twistin' in and out of itself until you got a whole mess
of cubes connected together. All of it looks like just lights; there ain't
nothin' to be seen, but it's kinda neat to look at.
Then you walk right into the mess, even as it twists and turns, goin' to the
middle of the thing, until everybody's in the same cube.
From inside, it looks different. You're in this cube of light, all right, but it
seems kinda hard and solid somehow. You can see a cube or two ahead or behind,
but you can't hear nothin' at all. It's like all the sounds just go away.
When we first fell into this thing by accident a coupla years ago, we only went
forward or back, but you can go other ways, too. If you look at the top of the
cube, then keep lookin' at it as you walk, the cube kinda, well, rotates, if you
can imagine it, and you walk through the top; same with the bottom or sides.
Wherever you look when you start walkin', that's where you go.
Startin' almost with the next cube, though, not all them cube faces are blank.
You get, well, flashes of places, or things. Sunsets, green hills, you name it.
They ain't exactly real when you look at 'em, more like reflections in a mirror,
but you know they are real and that if you go to that cube you'll come out
there. Some-a lot-are dark. Sometimes where you're lookin' is the inside of a
hill, or maybe up in the air with nothin' below, dependin' on what happened to
the spot you're standin' on. That's really the hard part- you don't move all
that much for all the walkin' you do through the thing. You can come out just
where you went in, but a hundred or a thousand worlds away.
And you can come out some other place, but not without goin' through a switchin'
cube. You can always tell a switchin' cube. All the faces but one are dark, and
that one has somebody in a room, just a room, sittin' in a chair, lookin' at a
whole mess of switches, dials, and screens. If they talk, you can hear 'em, and
if you talk, you can be heard, 'cept you sound more'n a little dead and flat.
Lots of them switchers ain't human, neither. At least, they ain't our kind of
human. First one we got to was a guy with hair all over his face and a real
animallike look; sorta the Wolfman in some fancy uniform. Bill says most of the
switchers are from the Type One worlds 'cause many of 'em got better hearin' and
can see more stuif than we can and for some reason that's important. They don't
speak English, neither, or any other language we know, but thanks to some little
gizmo when we talk it's translated to their language and when they talk it's
translated to ours.
Keeps things simpler. When 1 think of the number of languages they talk just on
our world, then you got to figure how many there must be goin' through here.
"Amitash fridlap!" said the hairy guy. It don't translate till it knows both
languages to use, of course.
"Headquarters, please," Bill responded, just like he understood that crap.
"Special Agent Markham, world thirteen twenty-nine two stroke seven, with
authorized encoded personnel from the same coordinates."