[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
curious about what the place looked like and what its people were like, but I
never expected to find out. Bill had been there twice before, so he at least
knew his way around a bit, but this time he wasn't bein' ordered there by the
bosses but by us. He didn't really seem to mind, which helped the nerves a
little, I guess. 'Course, he didn't have to get his mind fucked and go
undercover in that slime pit.
Bill was a nice guy, but you always got the idea that if he could get
somethin'
done a little quicker by killin' you it just wouldn't enter his head to do
nothin' else but shoot you right then and there.
It's always kinda impressive to watch the Labyrinth come on, partly 'cause you
still can't figure out what it's doin' or how and it's kinda pretty. You stand
over in the safe zone of this big warehouse floor and some folks up in a
control room high and to one side throw the switches and it starts with a
rumblin' under your feet that sorta shakes the whole building, like a
vibrator. Then this line is drawn, straight up and down, just a little above
the floor, in a kind of blue-white light. It just starts from nowhere, then
draws itself to maybe fifteen or twenty feet high. When they're happy with it,
they throw more switches and more lines start kinda branchin' off from the
other line. Like half the line just falls away and then you have an L, then
another from it to make a squared-off U and finally a top, so you got this big
square of light.
Then the whole square slips off and you got two sides, then it splits again,
and again, till you got a cube of light just sittin' there. Then it really
starts goin' fast, foldin' and twistin' in and out of itself until you got a
whole mess of cubes connected together. All of it looks like just lights;
there ain't nothin' to be seen, but it's kinda neat to look at.
Then you walk right into the mess, even as it twists and turns, goin' to the
middle of the thing, until everybody's in the same cube.
From inside, it looks different. You're in this cube of light, all right, but
it seems kinda hard and solid somehow. You can see a cube or two ahead or
Page 27
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
behind, but you can't hear nothin' at all. It's like all the sounds just go
away.
When we first fell into this thing by accident a coupla years ago, we only
went forward or back, but you can go other ways, too. If you look at the top
of the cube, then keep lookin' at it as you walk, the cube kinda, well,
rotates, if you can imagine it, and you walk through the top; same with the
bottom or sides.
Wherever you look when you start walkin', that's where you go.
Startin' almost with the next cube, though, not all them cube faces are blank.
You get, well, flashes of places, or things. Sunsets, green hills, you name
it.
They ain't exactly real when you look at 'em, more like reflections in a
mirror, but you know they are real and that if you go to that cube you'll come
out there. Some-a lot-are dark. Sometimes where you're lookin' is the inside
of a hill, or maybe up in the air with nothin' below, dependin' on what
happened to the spot you're standin' on. That's really the hard part- you
don't move all that much for all the walkin' you do through the thing. You can
come out just where you went in, but a hundred or a thousand worlds away.
And you can come out some other place, but not without goin' through a
switchin'
cube. You can always tell a switchin' cube. All the faces but one are dark,
and that one has somebody in a room, just a room, sittin' in a chair, lookin'
at a whole mess of switches, dials, and screens. If they talk, you can hear
'em, and if you talk, you can be heard, 'cept you sound more'n a little dead
and flat.
Lots of them switchers ain't human, neither. At least, they ain't our kind of
human. First one we got to was a guy with hair all over his face and a real
animallike look; sorta the Wolfman in some fancy uniform. Bill says most of
the switchers are from the Type One worlds 'cause many of 'em got better
hearin' and can see more stuif than we can and for some reason that's
important. They don't speak English, neither, or any other language we know,
but thanks to some little gizmo when we talk it's translated to their language
and when they talk it's translated to ours.
Keeps things simpler. When 1 think of the number of languages they talk just
on
file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%2...D.%20Inc%202%20-%20The%20Shado
w%20Dancers.txt (23 of 146) [1/19/03 4:19:22 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%20Jack%20L%20-%20G.O.D.%20Inc%202%
20-%20The%20Shadow%20Dancers.txt our world, then you got to figure how many
there must be goin' through here.
"Amitash fridlap!" said the hairy guy. It don't translate till it knows both
languages to use, of course.
"Headquarters, please," Bill responded, just like he understood that crap.
"Special Agent Markham, world thirteen twenty-nine two stroke seven, with
authorized encoded personnel from the same coordinates."
"English, huh?" the switcher grunted. "Okay, I've got you identified on my
screen. You're authorized to the next switch module. Go through."
He turned some funny dial and one of the black faces opened up and we walked
back into the quiet cubes with the many mirrors again.
The flashin' pictures on the walls, though, were different now. We sure
wouldn't come out in no Oregon no more if we walked through one. The skies
looked different, somehow, and the land was flatter, the green stuff a darker
green.
The trees looked big but all twisted 'round, and their leaves, when they had
them, were real dark.
Now, some of them paths was just to different exits, but some of the places
now already didn't look much like what I knew back home, even if they was
Africa or
Page 28
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Siberia. It was kinda wild to look at them and know that on most of 'em there
was billions of folks all goin' about whatever normal folks did there, livin'
and lovin' and dyin' and havin' babies and all the rest, all thinkin' they was
the center of creation.
We went through three more switchin' stations, each one with a man or woman or
something like that at the controls, but only one was what we'd call normal,
and that's only from what I could see. She was kinda plain but with bright [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl exclamation.htw.pl
curious about what the place looked like and what its people were like, but I
never expected to find out. Bill had been there twice before, so he at least
knew his way around a bit, but this time he wasn't bein' ordered there by the
bosses but by us. He didn't really seem to mind, which helped the nerves a
little, I guess. 'Course, he didn't have to get his mind fucked and go
undercover in that slime pit.
Bill was a nice guy, but you always got the idea that if he could get
somethin'
done a little quicker by killin' you it just wouldn't enter his head to do
nothin' else but shoot you right then and there.
It's always kinda impressive to watch the Labyrinth come on, partly 'cause you
still can't figure out what it's doin' or how and it's kinda pretty. You stand
over in the safe zone of this big warehouse floor and some folks up in a
control room high and to one side throw the switches and it starts with a
rumblin' under your feet that sorta shakes the whole building, like a
vibrator. Then this line is drawn, straight up and down, just a little above
the floor, in a kind of blue-white light. It just starts from nowhere, then
draws itself to maybe fifteen or twenty feet high. When they're happy with it,
they throw more switches and more lines start kinda branchin' off from the
other line. Like half the line just falls away and then you have an L, then
another from it to make a squared-off U and finally a top, so you got this big
square of light.
Then the whole square slips off and you got two sides, then it splits again,
and again, till you got a cube of light just sittin' there. Then it really
starts goin' fast, foldin' and twistin' in and out of itself until you got a
whole mess of cubes connected together. All of it looks like just lights;
there ain't nothin' to be seen, but it's kinda neat to look at.
Then you walk right into the mess, even as it twists and turns, goin' to the
middle of the thing, until everybody's in the same cube.
From inside, it looks different. You're in this cube of light, all right, but
it seems kinda hard and solid somehow. You can see a cube or two ahead or
Page 27
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
behind, but you can't hear nothin' at all. It's like all the sounds just go
away.
When we first fell into this thing by accident a coupla years ago, we only
went forward or back, but you can go other ways, too. If you look at the top
of the cube, then keep lookin' at it as you walk, the cube kinda, well,
rotates, if you can imagine it, and you walk through the top; same with the
bottom or sides.
Wherever you look when you start walkin', that's where you go.
Startin' almost with the next cube, though, not all them cube faces are blank.
You get, well, flashes of places, or things. Sunsets, green hills, you name
it.
They ain't exactly real when you look at 'em, more like reflections in a
mirror, but you know they are real and that if you go to that cube you'll come
out there. Some-a lot-are dark. Sometimes where you're lookin' is the inside
of a hill, or maybe up in the air with nothin' below, dependin' on what
happened to the spot you're standin' on. That's really the hard part- you
don't move all that much for all the walkin' you do through the thing. You can
come out just where you went in, but a hundred or a thousand worlds away.
And you can come out some other place, but not without goin' through a
switchin'
cube. You can always tell a switchin' cube. All the faces but one are dark,
and that one has somebody in a room, just a room, sittin' in a chair, lookin'
at a whole mess of switches, dials, and screens. If they talk, you can hear
'em, and if you talk, you can be heard, 'cept you sound more'n a little dead
and flat.
Lots of them switchers ain't human, neither. At least, they ain't our kind of
human. First one we got to was a guy with hair all over his face and a real
animallike look; sorta the Wolfman in some fancy uniform. Bill says most of
the switchers are from the Type One worlds 'cause many of 'em got better
hearin' and can see more stuif than we can and for some reason that's
important. They don't speak English, neither, or any other language we know,
but thanks to some little gizmo when we talk it's translated to their language
and when they talk it's translated to ours.
Keeps things simpler. When 1 think of the number of languages they talk just
on
file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%2...D.%20Inc%202%20-%20The%20Shado
w%20Dancers.txt (23 of 146) [1/19/03 4:19:22 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%20Jack%20L%20-%20G.O.D.%20Inc%202%
20-%20The%20Shadow%20Dancers.txt our world, then you got to figure how many
there must be goin' through here.
"Amitash fridlap!" said the hairy guy. It don't translate till it knows both
languages to use, of course.
"Headquarters, please," Bill responded, just like he understood that crap.
"Special Agent Markham, world thirteen twenty-nine two stroke seven, with
authorized encoded personnel from the same coordinates."
"English, huh?" the switcher grunted. "Okay, I've got you identified on my
screen. You're authorized to the next switch module. Go through."
He turned some funny dial and one of the black faces opened up and we walked
back into the quiet cubes with the many mirrors again.
The flashin' pictures on the walls, though, were different now. We sure
wouldn't come out in no Oregon no more if we walked through one. The skies
looked different, somehow, and the land was flatter, the green stuff a darker
green.
The trees looked big but all twisted 'round, and their leaves, when they had
them, were real dark.
Now, some of them paths was just to different exits, but some of the places
now already didn't look much like what I knew back home, even if they was
Africa or
Page 28
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Siberia. It was kinda wild to look at them and know that on most of 'em there
was billions of folks all goin' about whatever normal folks did there, livin'
and lovin' and dyin' and havin' babies and all the rest, all thinkin' they was
the center of creation.
We went through three more switchin' stations, each one with a man or woman or
something like that at the controls, but only one was what we'd call normal,
and that's only from what I could see. She was kinda plain but with bright [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]