The Complete Interworld Trilogy: Interworld; The Silver Dream; Eternity’s Wheel. Нил Гейман

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      And then the squid laughed and pointed at a bobbing bubble and said, “Hyoo!”

      “You’re right,” I said. “It does look like Hue.” And it did. They’d taken everything from my head, but they couldn’t take Hue. That balloon looked just like the …

      … just like the mudluff that was …

      “ … It’s a multidimensional life-form …”

      I could hear his voice saying it, under that swimming, finger-painted sky …

      Jay.

      I remembered him, lying bloody on the red earth after the monster attacked.…

      And then it came back. It all came back, hard and fast, while I was standing out in the snow with my baby brother, blowing bubbles.

      I remembered it. I remembered it all.

      I COULD WALK AGAIN.

      Don’t ask me how. Maybe there was a glitch in whatever brain-scrubbing gizmo they used on me. Maybe Hue was some kind of unanticipated variable they hadn’t programmed (or deprogrammed) for.… Whatever. All I know is, standing there in our backyard, shivering in that light dusting of snow, watching my little brother happily chasing those bubbles around, a series of firecrackers was going off in my head, each one illuminating a memory that hadn’t been there before.

      I remembered everything: the grueling days and nights of study and exercise; the infinite diversity of my classmates, all variations on a theme that was Joey Harker; the tiny supernovae going off apparently at random in the Old Man’s artificial eye; the seething Technicolor madness that was the In-Between …

      And the milk-run mission that had gone wrong, being captured once again by Lady Indigo and my rescue—mine and only mine—by Hue.

      I stood there, shivering from a chill that had nothing to do with the weather, mechanically dipping that bubble wand into the soapy solution and creating bubbles, and wondered what I should do now.

      I remembered the shame and helplessness I felt when I came back without my teammates. What had happened to them? What had Lady Indigo and Lord Dogknife done with them? To them? I desperately wanted to find out. And I knew I could. I knew I could Walk again, could go back through the In-Between. The formula for finding Base Town burned clear and bright in my mind. I could get there, oh yeah.

      But did I want to go?

      If I left my Earth again, I could never come back. Every time I opened a portal it was like sending up a signal flare to HEX and the Binary. I would be taking a chance of luring the bad guys here. Each Walker, I’d been told, had a unique psychic signature that could be traced. I guessed that the Binary had thousands of sequenced mainframes on the lookout for my configuration, just as HEX kept a phalanx of sorcerers on twenty-four-hour duty for the same reason. I couldn’t put my family and my friends in that kind of danger.

      If I never Walked again, the chances were trillions to one against either side ever deciding to conquer this particular world. It was virtually certain that I could grow up, get married, have kids, get old and die without ever having to hear about the Altiverse again.

      But to never Walk again …

      I don’t know if I’ve mentioned yet that Walking is like any skill you’re good at, in that I enjoyed it. It felt good, it felt right, to use my mind to open the In-Between, to pass from world to world to world. Chess masters don’t play for money, or even for competition—they play for love of the game. Mathematical savants don’t get their kicks from gardening—they juggle set theories in their heads or daydream pi to umpty-ump places. Like a trained gymnast, now that I remembered my ability, I itched to use it.

      I could not imagine living a lifetime without ever Walking again.

      But neither could I imagine it without ever seeing Mom or Dad, or Jenny or the squid again. I had signed up once, but that had been done mostly out of guilt over Jay’s death—I hadn’t realized what I was getting myself into.

      This time I knew all too well.

      I’d been mustered out once—they wouldn’t let me off that easily a second time. If I showed up at Base Town again, they would most probably court-martial me. Oh, they might have a different name for it, but a firing squad by any other name is still a bunch of guys with rifles pointed at you. I didn’t know if I’d ask for a blindfold or not, and had no great desire to find out.

      But if I stayed here, I’d have to live with the knowledge that I’d left people I cared for in trouble while I got away.

      I wished those damned soap bubbles hadn’t sparked whatever circuit held these memories. Ignorance might not have been bliss, but at least it wasn’t the stew of regret I found myself in now.

      The snowfall had turned to a cold rain. I could have told myself that it was the source of the water running down my cheeks, but it doesn’t rain warm salt water. And I’d lied to myself enough.

      I watched one soap bubble that Kevin was chasing. It was floating higher than the others, about level with the garage roof. It drifted into the bare branches of the nearby oak, and I expected to see it vanish in a soundless pop.

      It didn’t.

      Instead, it hovered there for a moment, then drifted slowly toward me. The squid ran along underneath it, yelling in frustrated futility because he couldn’t reach it. The bubble moved along against the slight breeze that had come up, and stopped and hovered in front of me.

      “Hi, Hue,” I said.

      The mudluff rippled orange with pleasure, then shot up over my head, passing above the roof. I turned, craning my neck to follow him, but he was already gone.

      “Bub-bell?” Kevin asked plaintively. “Bub-bell? Hyoo?”

      I nodded. “That’s right, squid kid.” I looked down at him, watched him wipe his nose on his coat sleeve and said, “Time to go in.”

      I stayed up most of the night, worrying at the problem from first one end and then the other. I couldn’t talk to Mom or Dad—they’re great parents, but both of them together couldn’t summon up enough imagination to deal with one extra Joey, never mind an infinity of them. Who else could I talk to? Certainly not my classmates. My guidance counselor had been found sobbing quietly in his office last semester, and hadn’t been replaced yet. Most of my teachers were one-trick ponies; after five months under the whip at Base Town I already knew more than any of them ever could know or handle knowing. Out of the entire teaching staff there was only one person who might possibly listen to me and not call for the men in white coats.

      Mr. Dimas leaned back in his chair and stared at the acoustic tiles above him. He had a vaguely stunned expression, and I couldn’t really blame him—after all, the story I’d just told him probably wasn’t one he’d heard СКАЧАТЬ