"Pendragon - 01 - The Merchant Of Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacHale D J)

I stood there on top of this mountain, all alone, sneakers getting wet in the snow, staring up at three blazing suns. I’m not ashamed to admit this, I wanted my mom. I wanted to be sitting in front of the TV fighting for the remote with Shannon. I wanted to be washing the car with Dad. I wanted to be shooting hoops with you. Suddenly the things I had taken for granted in life felt very far away. I wanted to go home, but all I could do was stand there and cry. I really did. I cried.

Then the sound came again, from inside the cave—the same jumble of musical notes that had sucked me into the tunnel and dumped me here. Someone else was coming. Uncle Press! It had to be! I ran back into the cave, overjoyed that I wasn’t going to be alone anymore. But then another thought hit me. What if it wasn’t Uncle Press? What if it was that Saint Dane guy? The last time I had the pleasure of hanging with that dude, he was shooting at us. And I gotta tell you, getting shot at isn’t like what you see in the movies, or with Nintendo. It’s real and it’s terrifying. I could still feel the sting on the back of my neck where I got hit by the shattered pieces of tile.

I didn’t know what to do, so I stopped in the middle of the big cave and waited. Whoever it was would be coming out of the tunnel. Would it be Uncle Press or Saint Dane? Or maybe those freakin’ dogs that wanted to eat me. Wouldn’t that be just perfect? Who was it going to be? Friend or foe?

“Bobby?”

It was Uncle Press! He walked out of the tunnel with his long leather coat flapping against his legs. I could have hugged him. In fact, I did. I ran over to him like a little kid. If this were a movie, I’d have been running in slow motion. I threw my arms around him with the feeling of pure joy and gratitude that I wasn’t alone anymore, and that my favorite guy in the world wasn’t shot dead by that Saint Dane guy. He was safe.

This feeling lasted for about, oh, three seconds. Now that my fear of impending doom was gone, reality came flooding back. And there was only one person responsible for my being here. Uncle Press. Someone I trusted. Someone I loved. Someone who yanked me from home and nearly got me killed about eight times over.

I pushed away from him with a shove that was hard enough to knock him off his feet, because that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted him to feel how angry I was. But as I saw before, Uncle Press was strong. It was like trying to push over a wall. All I managed to do was knock myself off balance and fall on my butt.

“What the hell is going on!” I shouted as I scrambled back to my feet, trying not to look like an idiot.

“Bobby, I know you’re confused about—”

“Confused? Confused doesn’t begin to cover it!” I stormed over to the mouth of the tunnel and screamed, “Denduron.Denduron! ” I’d sayanything to get out of there. But nothing happened.

“This is Denduron. We’re already here,” he said as if that were supposed to make sense.

“Okay then,” I looked into the tunnel and screamed, “Earth! New York! The subway! There’s no place like home!” I ran into the tunnel, hoping the magical notes would pick me up and fly me home. But nothing happened. I came back out and got right in Uncle Press’s face.

“I don’t care what this is about,” I said with as much authority as I could generate. “I don’t even care where we are. I care about going home and going home now! Take…me…home!”

Uncle Press just looked at me. He had to know how angry and scared I was, so I think he was trying to choose his next words carefully. Unfortunately no matter how carefully he chose his next words, there was no good way of saying what he then told me.

“Bobby, you can’t go home. You belong here right now.”

Boom. Just like that. I backed away from him, stunned. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to think. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to reason with him. I wanted to wake up and find this was all just a horrible nightmare.

Uncle Press didn’t say anything. He just watched me and waited for me to get my act together. But with all the confusing information that had been so rudely input into my poor little skull, all I could squeak out was a single, simple question. “Why?”

“I told you. There are people here on Denduron who need our help,” he said slowly, as if to a little kid, which made me even more angry.

“But I don’t know these people!” I shouted. “I don’t care about them. I care about me. I care about getting me home. What is it about that, you don’t understand?”

“I understand perfectly. But that can’t happen,” he said firmly.

“Why? What’s so important about these people? And where is here anyway? Where is this…Denduron?”

“That’s hard to explain.”

“Try,” I said. I was getting fed up with all the mystery.

Uncle Press sat down on a rock. I took that as a sign that he was ready to start helping me understand things.

“We are far from Earth, but this isn’t a different planet in the sense you’re thinking. It’s a territory. Like Earth is a territory.”