"Emil Petaja - The Time Twister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Petaja Emil)

crew-cut rug, isn't it?" They'd done a lot of transplanting and, at Steve's age, all those wiry blue-black curls
would grow back in no time. They said.
"Package for Doctor Stephen H. McCord!" Bill Brandt, Ward C's newscaster and dispenser of
good-natured scuttlebutt, burst in, grinning and waving a square flat object. "Glad I caught you, Doc! Hey,
you look terrific in herringbone tweed!"
"Thanks. What you got?"
"Dunno. Looks like an underfed pizza. Do they grow pizza up in Montana?"
"Montana!"
Steve accepted the beat-up package, squinting at the smeared return. "Care of Postmaster, Missoula,
Montana." He frowned.
"Who's Art Mackey?" Bill wondered cheerfully. They'd gotten to be friends and most of the Army and
U. S. Marine patients liked it when he bent an ear their way.
"Art? An old buddy. I first met Art Mackey at U. C. He was their star halfback. Big blonde Finn. I told
you about him. Been wondering if he'd ever get around to writing."
"Oh, yeah. I remember Art Mackey. Big name around the Berkeley campus a few years back. Funny,
you two getting to be such good friends. Him, football. You, egghead science and all."
Steve smiled. "So I like football. I looked up Art when I was writing my thesis on A Study of the
Ural-Altaic Language Group. I was boning up on Finnish, trying to plow through the Kalevala legends in
the original. Art Mackey was the only Finn I could find who spoke Suomi."
"How about that!"
"Art's family lived in Montana. His father kept him brushing up until he died."
"I used to go with a Finn girl. 'Mackey' doesn't sound Finnish. Mostly their names run to ten syllables
and sound like cracking nuts with your teeth."
"It was probably 'Makki' to start with. I ran into that name on my trip to Lapland the summer before
Uncle Sam pointed the finger at me. One of the few pleasures of that Asian mess was running into Art
again, our long talks about Finland, all that."
"Hey! It was Art who saved your life, wasn't it?"
 "Yes. I had no medical degree, but I'd had premed training before I switched to anthropology research.
It was Art Mackey, all right. I was doing ambulance duty. Got too near the action. A blockbuster splattered
my jeep all to hell and gone. Art yanked me out from under, toted me to safety."
"You owe Finn Mackey your life. No wonder you want to hear what he's up to!"
Steve thumbnailed open the frayed edge of the square, flat box. "It's a tape, all right. I gave Art a Sony
recorder before he left. He promised not to write, but I thought he might manage to talk me a tape. It's
been two months since he left."
"For where?"
"Hellmouth."
"Hellmouth!"
"You won't find it on any map. It's only a wide spot in the road and no road. 'Way hell and gone up in
the hills. Logging town of some kind. One of those little sawmills like up in Humboldt County."
"Why'd Art pick a dead end like Hellmouth?"
"He went to find a girl."
"Figures. Beautiful blonde Finn, I suppose?"
"Ilma's beautiful all right. She was down here in San Francisco for a couple years. She was a ballet
dancer. Art used to read me parts of her letters. Then, after she went back to Montana to take care of her
father, nothing."
"A mystery, eh?"
Steve nodded, frowning. "Her father and her older brother, Yalmar, lived on this farm just outside
Hell-mouth. When Ilma was thirteen, her father'd sent her to her spinster aunt in Astoria to get a good
education. When the aunt died, Ilma joined a small ballet company and ended up with the San Francisco
Ballet for one season. She was good. Very good. But—"