"ferryman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Eric)

Ferryman

By Eric Brown.


Richard Lincoln sat in the darkened living room and half-listened to the radio news. More unrest in the East; riots and protests against the implantation process in India and Malaysia. The President of France had taken his life, another suicide statistic to add to the growing list... The news finished and was followed by a weather report: more snow was forecast for that night and the following day. Lincoln was hoping for quiet shift when the bracelet around his wrist began to warm. He pushed himself from his armchair, crossed to the computer on the desk, and touched the bracelet to the screen.

The name and address of the deceased glowed in the darkness.

Despite the weather and the inconvenience of the late hour, as ever he felt the visceral thrill of embarkation, the anticipation of what was to come.

He memorised the address as he stepped into the hall and found his coat, already planning the route twenty miles over the moors to the dead man's town.

He was checking his pocket for the Range Rover's keys when he heard the muffled grumble, amplified by the snow, of a car's engine. His cottage was a mile from the nearest road, serviced by a pot-holed cart track. No-one ever turned down the track by mistake, and he'd had no visitors in years.

He waited, as if half-expecting the noise to go away - but the vehicle's irritable whine increased as it fought through the snow and ice towards the cottage. Lincoln switched on the outside light and returned to the living room, pulling aside the curtain and peering out.

A white Fiat Panda lurched from pot-hole to pot-hole, headlights bouncing. It came to a stop outside the cottage, the sudden silence profound, and a second later someone climbed out.

Lincoln watched his daughter slam the door and pick her way carefully through the snow.

The door-bell chimed.

For a second he envisaged the tense confrontation that would follow, but the warm glow at his wrist gave him an excuse to reduce his contact with Susanne to a minimum.

He pulled open the door. She stood tall in an expensive white mackintosh, collar turned up around her long, dark, snow-specked hair.

Her implant showed as a slight bulge at her temple.

She could hardly bring herself to look him in the eye. Which, he thought, was hardly surprising.

She gave a timid half-smile. "It's cold out here, Richard."

"Ah... Come in. This is a surprise. Why didn't you ring?"

"I couldn't talk over the phone. I needed to see you in person."

To explain herself, he thought; to excuse her recent conduct.

She swept past him, shaking the melted snow from her hair. She hung her coat in the hall and walked into the living room.

Lincoln paused behind her, his throat constricted with an emotion he found hard to identify. He knew he should have felt angry, but all he did feel was the desire for Susanne to leave.

"I'm sorry. I should have come sooner. I've been busy."

She was thirty, tall and good-looking and - damn them - treacherous genes had bequeathed her the unsettling appearance of her mother.

As he stared at her, Lincoln realised that he no longer knew the woman who was his daughter.

"But I'm here now," she said. "I've come about-"