"Robert F. Young - The Garden in the Forest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

focus was established, he teleported.
 The chaotic canyon in which he materialized dismayed him at first, but he was a veteran of the mad
milieus of many civilizations and he adjusted himself without trouble. He withdrew into a dark entrance,
out of physical contact with the churning mass of humans and vehicles that filled the floor of the canyon,
and prepared for his first probe.
A middle-aged man came down the street. There was a noticeable confidence in his walk, a
corresponding confidence in his handsome, well-preserved face. As he passed the entrance, Ghan
slipped into his mind.
The man was climbing a precipitous mountain. He was sure-footed and agile and he found hand- and
foot-holds in impossible places. He climbed higher and higher, staring resolutely at the sheer wall before
him. Presently he paused to rest. He looked down then, and on the slope far below he saw another man.
Uncontrollable hatred suffused him. He looked wildly about him for a weapon —a rock, a stone, even a
stick—anything at all to hurl down on the man below him. But the face of the mountain was utterly bleak
and offered him nothing.
Before resuming his climb the man glanced upward. The mountain spired into the sky. The sun
glittered coldly on its smooth polished surface. It had no ledges where a man could pause to rest; it was
an endless obelisk, a perpendicular eternity.
The man began climbing again. Frantically, desperately—
An old man with a decayed face shuffled past the entrance. Ghan probed again.
He was descending a rotting stairway into a noisome pit. (Total identification with the subject was
possible after one or two probes.) There was a scurrying of furry creatures about his legs and a constant
obscene squeaking. He didn't want to descend the stairway; the thought of what awaited him below filled
him with unspeakable terror; and yet he continued to descend, down, down, ever downward, and there
were cold, slimy creatures intertwining about his legs now, and abruptly there was a cracking sound as
one of the steps gave way, and he staggered and he almost fell into the loathsome Stygian depths—
A woman passed. After the stairway the warm spacious room seemed tranquil and secure. But not
for long. Presently he noticed a twisted scar disfiguring one of the rose walls, and fleeing from the scar
toward a vague doorway he nearly stepped into a ragged crevice that yawned without warning in the
blood-red rug. He managed somehow to avoid the crevice, but when he looked for the doorway again it
was gone
A young man walked briskly by. Another mountain, a gentle mountain this time. The lower slopes
were green with grass and the forested upper slopes slanted leisurely into a blue and cloudless sky. It
was morning and a summer sun warmed his back.
There were three women following him. Occasionally he paused in his ascent and glanced back at
them. The first one had dark disheveled hair, and long graceful legs. But she had no face. The second one
was half chimera, half reality. Most of the time she was a gray silhouette, but sometimes the silhouette
resolved into a voluptuous body and a trite, pretty face.
The third one was a tenuous shadow—

It was dawn when Ghan returned to the summerhouse. He sat on the bench for a long time, staring
through the interstices of the latticed roof at the sky. The sky was gray at first, but after a while the
grayness softened subtly to pink, and then to a washed blue. Finally the first pale rays of the sun brimmed
over a scalloped rim of hills and streamed across the fields.
He heard voices then, and caught vague thought patterns. Presently three figures came round the
corner of the barn and approached the summerhouse. One of them was the little girl who had run away
the preceding day. The other two were adults: a thin, pale woman, and a tall man carrying a
double-barreled shotgun.
"There, you see!" the little girl said, as they stopped before the doorway. "Now you've got to believe
me!"
The man and the woman stared into the interior. They looked at the bench, the table, the transmitter