Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny Read Free Book Online Page A

of reach.
    "It is just a little farther," he said. "Then you can rest. I will fetch you nourishment."
    "I am sorry," I said, struggling to rise and failing, "but this is it. If I can wait up ahead, I can wait here. I'm out of gas."
    "The way is rocky," he said, "and they should not be able to track you. But I would feel better if you could continue just a little farther. There is an alcove off to the side, you see. If you were in there, chances are they would pass without seeing you if they should happen to stumble on this trail. What do you say?"
    "I say it sounds good, but I don't think I can do it."
    "Try again. One more time."
    "All right."
    I pushed myself up, wobbled, advanced. If I fell again, that was it, I decided. I would have to take my chances. I was feeling lightheaded as well as heavy-bodied.
    But I persisted. A hundred feet perhaps . . .
    He led me into a hidden drive of a cul-de-sac off to the side of the rift we had been traversing. I collapsed there and everything began to swirl and ebb.
    I thought I heard him say, "I am going now. Wait here."
    "Sure thing," I seemed to reply.
    Another blackness. Absolute. A parched, brittle thing/place of indeterminate size/duration. I was in it and vice versa-equally distributed and totally contained by/in the nightmare system with consciousness at C-n and chillthirstheatchillthirstheat a repeating decimal running every/anywhere on the projective plane that surrounded . . .
    Flashes and imaginings . . . "Do you hear me, Fred? Do you hear me, Fred?" Water, trickling down my throat. Another blackness. Flash. Water, on my face, in my mouth. Movement. Shadows. A moaning . . .
    Moaning. Shadows, a lesser black. Flash. Flashes. A light through parted lashes, dim. The ground below, passing. The moaning, mine.
    "Do you hear me, Fred?"
    "Yes," I said, "yes . . ."
    The movement ceased. I overheard an exchange in a language I did not recognize. Then the ground rose. I was deposited upon it.
    "Are you awake? Can you hear me?"
    "Yes, yes. I already said 'yes.' How many times-"
    "Yes, he appears to be awake"-this superfluous comment in a voice I recognized as that of my friend the wombat.
    There bad been more than one voice, but I could not see the speakers because of the angle at which I lay. And it was too much trouble to turn my head. I opened my eyes fully, though, and saw that the terrain was flat and pinked, though not tenderized, by the first low flames of morning.
    All of the previous day's happenings slowly emerged from that place where memories stay when you are not using them. These, along with the moral I had drawn from them, were as responsible as muscle tone for my unwillingness to turn and regard my companions. And it wasn't bad just lying there. If I waited long enough, I might go away again and come back someplace else.
    "I say," came a strange voice, "would you care for a peanut-butter sandwich?"
    Pieces of broken reverie fell all about me. Gagging, I gained a new perspective on the ground and the long shadows that lay across it.
    Because of the peculiar outline I had regarded, I was not completely surprised when I raised my head and saw a six-foot-plus kangaroo standing beside the wombat. It considered me through a pair of dark glasses as it removed a sandwich bag from its pouch.
    "Peanut butter is rich in protein," it said.

Chapter 4
    Hanging there, some twenty or thirty thousand miles above it, I was in a perfect position to enjoy the event if California were to break loose, slip away and vanish beneath the Pacific. Unfortunately, this did not occur. Instead, the whole world slipped away as the vessel continued its orbiting and the argument proceeded behind my back.
    However, at the rate things were going it seemed possible that the San Andreas fault would have several more opportunities to present me with the desired spectacle while providing some Donnelly of the distant future with material for a book on the peculiarities of that antediluvian world and its