"Michael Scott Rohan - Chase the Morning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rohan Michael Scott)

at least three hours earlier. The same, yet - as you might expect - seen from
a slightly different angle. I began to shake; had the blow affected my brain?
Yet I'd never felt more sure of anything; both visions burned together in my
brain, the seas of gold and silver. Bewildered, I looked down, and saw, above
that landscape mirrored in a stagnant gutter, a sign on the grimy wall.
Beneath the gutterings of spray paint it read, quite clearly, Tampere Street.
I ran forward wildly, and there, not a hundred yards from the corner, was my
car.
Forgetting all else, I bolted for it. But now, somehow, the wind was in
my face, whirling up cinder dust to sting my eyes, buffeting me on the
slippery cobbles; it felt like a hand holding me back, barring me from my
refuge, my escape. A filthy rag of polythene hissed out of the gutter and
tangled itself lovingly around my ankles; I kicked it free and trampled on it
like some living menace. But I was there, my hand fell on the wing, its steel
cold beneath the smooth paintwork. I fumbled for my keys, barely catching them
as the wind sought to whisk them from my numbed fingers into the drain
beneath, yanked the door open and plunged in.
It was slow to start; I almost flooded the carburettor in my impatience. I
forced myself to sit still a moment while the wind buffeted the car, staring
into my rear-view mirror at the darkness I'd come out of. Then I tried again,
my foot light upon the pedal, and heard the blessed cough and rumble of the
engine, felt its vibrations stronger than the wind. I slipped it into gear,
twisted the wheel and all but threw the car out from the kerb, growling across
the cobbles. Only once I looked back, but the street's end was in deeper
shadow still; anything or nothing might have been lurking there. Then I turned
out into the main road, into Danube Street where there was lighting that
worked, cold and orange though it was, and the prospect at least of the noise
and colour and company, the safety of the city I knew. It came crazily into my
head how for the ancient Romans the Danube was a barrier of civilization,
holding barbarism at bay; but it was not a comforting thought, for at the end
that barbarism had come rolling across the Danube in an overwhelming wave. I
slowed, waited at the junction and turned, and there it all was. Noise,
colour, company, safety - but all of it strange, all men about me strangers.
Safe, but strangers. Suddenly the trade didn't seem so good, the escape less
of an escape. Had that light really been red? Or had I just been afraid to see
it was amber? I couldn't answer. I was tired, sore, and I hadn't eaten.
I went home, and threw something into the microwave. Hard. CHAPTER TWO
1 UULi OFFICE NEXT MORNING pulled me sharply back. Everything seemed solid
and familiar, everything was bright and sunlit and unmysterious, from the
squeak of the fake-mosaic tiles under my shoes to the sweet smile from Judy
behind the switchboard. This morning, too, it was nicely flavoured with
sympathy.
'Hallo, Steve - how's the arm?'
'Oh, it's okay, thanks. Settling down.'
There was nothing mysterious about these corridors, all light-flooding
windows and cool daffodil-yellow walls, no dark corners, no strange
atmospheres. After last night they felt businesslike, bracing, reassuring. The
only smells in the conditioned air were fresh polish and coffee and the warm
tang that surrounds VDUs and other office electronics, with an acetonal whiff
of nail varnish and menthol cigarettes as I passed the typists' room; clean