Страница 19 из 48
" ‘Sure you can go higher,' I said," Kickaha continued. " ‘Because if you don't, you'll get nowhere.'
" ‘Twenty thousand?' Va
" ‘Let's pump it up a bit,' I said.
" ‘Thirty thousand?' "
Fi
"Then I knew I really had something," Kickaha said to Wolff. "The question was, what? Also, why did this Va
"What did Va
"Oh, he was a big guy, a well-preserved sixty-five. He had an eagle beak and eagle eyes. He was dressed in expensive conservative clothes. He had a powerful personality, but he was trying to restrain it, to be real nice. And having a hell of a time doing it. He seemed to be a man who wasn't used to being balked in any thing."
" ‘Make it $300,000, and it's yours' I said. I never dreamed he'd say yes. I thought he'd get mad and take off. Because I wasn't going to sell the crescent, not if he offered me a million."
Va
" ‘You have to tell me why you want the crescent and what good it is first,' I said.
" ‘Nothing doing!' he shouted. It is enough for you to rob me, you pig of a merchant, you, you earth . .. worm!'
" ‘Get out before I throw you out. Or before I call the police,' I said."
Va
That night Fi
Its beam caught Va
"Then I saw the second crescent on the floor. Va
"I told him to put his hands up. He did so, but he lifted his foot to step into the circle. I told him not to move even a trifle, or I'd shoot. He put one foot inside the circle, anyway. So I fired. I shot over his head, and the slug went into a corner of the room. I just wanted to scare him, figuring if he got shaken up enough he might start talking. He was scared all right; he jumped back.
"I walked across the room while he backed up toward the door. He was babbling like a maniac, threatening me in one breath and offering me half a million in the next. I thought I'd back him up against the door and jam the .45 in his belly. He'd really talk then, spill his guts out about the crescent.
"But as I followed him across the room I stepped into the circle formed by the two crescents. He saw what I was doing and screamed at me not to. Too late then. He and the apartment disappeared, and I found myself still in the circle—only it wasn't quite the same—and in this world. In the palace of the Lord, on top of the world."
Kickaha said he might have gone into shock then. But he had avidly read fantasy and science-fiction since the fourth grade of grammar school. The idea of parallel universes and devices for transition between them was familiar. He had been conditioned to accept such concepts. In fact, he half-believed in them. Thus he was flexible-minded enough to bend without breaking and then bounce back. Although frightened, he was at the same time excited and curious.
"I figured out why Va
"Va
"He must be stranded on Earth and unable to get here unless he finds another crescent. For all I know, there may be others on Earth. The one I got in Germany might not even be the one he lost."
Fi
"I was lucky. The palace is filled with traps to snare or kill the uninvited. But they were not set— why, I don't know, any more than I knew then why the place was untenanted. But it was a break for me."
Fi
"You've seen enough to imagine how I felt when I looked over the edge. The monolith must be at least thirty thousand feet high. Below it is the tier that the Lord named Atlantis. I don't know whether the Earth myth of Atlantis was founded on this Atlantis or whether the Lord got the name from the myth.
"Below Atlantis is the tier called Dracheland. Then, Amerindia. One sweep of my eye took it in, just as you can see one side of the Earth from a rocket. No details, of course, just big clouds, large lakes, seas, and outlines of continents. And a good part of each successively lower tier was obscured by the one just above it.
"But I could make out the Tower of Babylon structure of this world, even though I didn't, at that time, understand what I was seeing. It was just too unexpected and alien for me to apprehend any sort of gestalt. It didn't mean anything."
Fi
Although he was in no danger of starving—there was food and water enough to last for years—he could not and did not want to stay there. He dreaded the return of the owner, for he might have a very nasty temper. There were some things in the palace which made Kickaha feel uneasy.