"Orson Scott Card - Ender's Saga 03 - Xenocide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

continuing to live in this body. And perhaps it would begin with meeting
Andrew's sister.
The ships were now joining, the umbilicals snaking outward and searching,
groping till they met each other. Miro watched on the monitors and listened to
the computer reports of each successful linkage. The ships were joining in every
possible way so that they could make the rest of the voyage to Lusitania in
perfect tandem. All resources would be shared. Since Miro's ship was a cargo
vessel, it couldn't take on more than a handful of people, but it could take
some of the other ship's life-support supplies; together, the two ship's
computers were figuring out a perfect balance.
Once they had calculated the load, they worked out exactly how fast each ship
should accelerate as they made the park shift to get them both back to
near-lightspeed at exactly the same pace. It was an extremely delicate and
complicated negotiation between two computers that had to know almost perfectly
what their ships carried and how they could perform. It was finished before the
passage tube between the ships was fully connected.
Miro heard the footsteps scuffing along the corridor from the tube. He turned
his chair-- slowly, because he did everything slowly-- and saw her coming toward
him. Stooped over, but not very much, because she wasn't that tall to begin
with. Hair mostly white, with a few strands of mousy brown. When she stood he
looked at her face and judged her. Old but not elderly. If she was nervous about
this meeting it didn't show. But then, from what Andrew and Jane had told him
about her, she had met a lot of people who were a good deal more fearsome than a
twenty-year-old cripple.
"Miro?" she asked.
"Who else?" he said.
It took a moment, just a heartbeat, for her to process the strange sounds that
came out of his mouth and recognize the words. He was used to that pause now,
but he still hated it.
"I'm Valentine," she said.
"I know," he answered. He wasn't making this any easier, with his laconic
replies, but what else was there to say? This wasn't exactly a meeting between
heads of state with a list of vital decisions to make. But he had to make some
effort, if only not to seem hostile.
"Your name, Miro-- it means 'I look,' doesn't it?"
"'I look closely.' Maybe 'I pay attention.'"
"It's really not that hard to understand you," said Valentine.
He was startled that she addressed the matter so openly.
"I think I'm having more problems with your Portuguese accent than with the
brain damage."
For a moment it felt like a hammer in his heart-- she was speaking more frankly
about his situation than anyone except Andrew. But then she was Andrew's sister,
wasn't she? He should have expected her to be plainspoken.
"Or do you prefer that we pretend that it isn't a barrier between you and other
people?"
Apparently she had sensed his shock. But that was over, and now it occurred to
him that he probably shouldn't be annoyed, that he should probably be glad that
they wouldn't have to sidestep the issue. Yet he was annoyed, and it took him a
moment to think why. Then he knew.
"My brain damage isn't your problem," he said.