The Einstein Intersection Read Online Free PDF Page A

confusion, and plain annoyance.
    The beast roared again. I pushed the crossbow farther up my arm and settled my machete handle at my hip.
    If you were going to do something stupid-and we all do -it might as well be a brave and foolish thing.
    I clapped Lo Hawk’s shoulder and started for the pit.
    On this side the break was sharp and the drop deep. I went around to the sagging side, where there were natural ledges of root, earth, and masonry. I circled the chasm and scrambled down.
    Sun struck the wall across from me, glistening with moss. I dropped my hand from the moist rock and stepped across an oily rivulet whose rainbow went out under my shadow. Somewhere up the tunnel, hooves clattered on stone.
    I started forward. There were many cracks in the high ceiling, here and there lighting on the floor, a branch clawing crisped leaves, or the rim of a hole that might go down a few inches, a few feet, or drop to the lowest levels of the source-cave that were thousands of feet below.
    I came to a fork, started beneath the vault to the left, and ten feet into the darkness tripped and rolled down a flight of shallow steps, once through a puddle (my hand splatting out in the darkness), once over dry leaves (they roared their own roar beneath my side), and landed at the bottom in a shaft of light, knees and palms on gravel.
    Clatter!
    Clatter!
    Much closer: Clatter!
    I sprang to my feet and away from the telltale light. Motes cycloned in the slanting illumination where I had been. And the motes stilled.
    My stomach felt like a loose bag of water sloshing around on top of my gut. Walking towards that sound-he was quiet now and waiting-was no longer a matter of walking in a direction. Rather: pick that foot up, lean forward, put it down. Good. Now, pick up the other one, lean forward-
    A hundred yards ahead I suddenly saw another light because something very large suddenly filled it up. Then it emptied.
    Clack! Clack! Clack!
    Snort!
    And three steps could carry him such a long way.
    Then a lot of clacks!
    I threw myself against the wall, pushing my face into dirt and roots.
    But the sound was going off.
    I swallowed all the bitter things that had risen into my throat and stepped back from the wall.
    With a quick walk that became a slow run I followed him under the crumbling vaults.
    His sound came from the right.
    So I turned right and into a sloping tunnel so low that ahead of me I heard his horns rasp on the ceiling. Stone and scale and old lichen chittered down at his hulking shoulders, then to the ground.
    The gutter on the side of the tunnel had coated the stone with fluorescent slime. The trickle became a stream as the slope increased till the frothing light raced me on the left.
    Once his hooves must have crossed a metal floor-plate, because for a half-dozen steps orange sparks glittered where he stepped, lighting him to the waist.
    He was only thirty meters ahead of me.
    Sparks again as he turned a corner.
    I felt stone under the soles of my feet and then cold, smooth metal. I passed some leaves, blown here by what wind, that his hooves had ignited. They writhed with worms of fire, glowing about my toes. And for moments the darkness filled with autumn.
    I reached the corner, started around.
    Facing me, he bellowed.
    His foot struck a meter from my foot and from this close the sparks lit his raw eyes, his polished nostrils.
    His hand came between his eyes and me, falling! I rolled backward, grabbing for my machete.
    His palm-flat this time, Hawk-clanged on the metal plate where I had been. Then it fell again toward where I was.
    I lay on my back with the hilt of the blade on the floor, point up. Very few people, or bulls, can hit a ten penny nail and drive it to the hilt. Fortunately.
    He jerked me from the floor, pinioned to his palm, and I got flung around (holding on to the blade with hands and feet and screaming) an awful lot.
    He was screaming too, butting the ceiling and lots of things falling. From twenty feet he flung me