"Keith Laumer - Day Before Forever" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

The Day Before Forever
Keith Laumer
 The Day Before Forever
Keith Laumer
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Epilogue
 Prologue
Somewhere a bell was ringing. The Old Man reached out in the darkness, fumbled
across rumpled silks for the heavy velvet pull cord. He tugged it twice, imperiously.
"Sir!" a voice responded instantly.
"Get him!"
The Old Man lay back among the scattered cushions.
He's alive, he thought. Somewhere in the city, he's alive again. . . .
 1
It was a narrow street, without curbs or sidewalks, jammed between flat gray walls
that ran in a straight line as far as I could see. Misty light filtered down from above on a
heavy ornamental ironwork gate set in the wall across the way. There were no people in
sight, no parked cars, no doorways, no windows. Just the wall and the gate and the street,
and a rumble through my shoes like heavy machinery grinding up boulders in the
distance.
I took a step away from the wall and the pain hit me. The top of my skull felt like the
place John Henry had picked to drive his last spike. Cold rain was trickling down my face
and a cut on my lip was leaking salty blood that mixed with the rain. I looked at the
palms of my hands; they were crisscrossed with shallow cuts, and there was rust and
grime in the cuts. That started me trying to remember when I'd had my last tetanus shot,
but thinking just made my head hurt worse.
A few feet to the left an alley mouth cut back into the wall behind me; I had a feeling
something unpleasant might come out of it any minute now, and a little curiosity stirred
as to what might be at the other end, but it was just a passing thought. I needed a dark