"Charles DeVet - Infinity's Child" - читать интересную книгу автора (DeVet Charles)

He wondered if he had taken over the body and mindтАФcomplete with all the mental trappingsтАФof some
other being. Or whether he had been just now conceived, full-blown and with memories of a synthetic
past perhaps implanted also in the minds of those with whom he was supposed to have come in contact.
He did not know. He was only sure that, before this moment, he had not been.

WITH the realization came the certainty that he would not die. The force he felt within himтАФhe was
not certain whether it was a part of himself, or the evidence of an outside controlтАФwas too powerful.
The inner spontaneity gathered strength until it became a striving, persistent vital force, a will of
imperious purpose. It moved him and he moved his tongue and spoke. "I will not die!" he shouted.
Some time later he grew aware that his sense of hearing had returned. He heard a voice say, "He was
in the last stages about an hour ago, before he spoke. I thought I'd better call you."
"You did right," a second voice answered. "What's his name?"
"Clifford Buckmaster."
They're talking about me, he thought. Like a burst of glory, sight returned. He looked up and saw
two men standing beside his bed. The older man wore a plain black suit. The younger was dressed in the
white uniform of a doctor.
"He can see now," the older man said. His was a voice Buckmaster disliked.
"It looks as if he's going to recover," the doctor said. "That's never happened before. Do you want
me to leave him here with the dying ones?"
"No. Wheel him into your office. And leave us alone there. My name is James Wagner. You have, of
course, heard of me. I am the Director of Security."
Buckmaster still rested in his hospital bed. They had screwed up the back until he sat almost straight.
In his mouth there was a slight tang and knew the sense of taste returned. When he was able to feel again
he would be entirely well. Yes, he'd heard of Wagner before. He nodded.
"And I know who you are," Wagner said. "You are one of the Underground that is trying to
overthrow the General. That is correct, is it not?"
Almost with surprise Buckmaster felt Wagner's words register in his mind. His implanted memories
were still strange to him. But he recalled them quickly.
Twenty years before, in 1979, the great Atomic War had ended. In the beginning the two giants
faced each other across the separating oceans. No one was certain who sent the first bomb across in its
controlled rocket; each side blamed the other.
The methods of each were terrible in their efficiency. The great manufacturing cities were the first to
go. After them went the vital transportation centers.
Striving mightily for an early advantage each country forced landing armies on the enemy's shores.
The armies invaded with their hundreds of thousands of menтАФand the bombings continued.
The colossus of the western hemisphere had set up autonomous launching stations, so that if and
when their major cities had all been bombed, their ruling bodies decimated and scatteredтАФeven if there
were no longer any vestiges of a central authorityтАФthe launchings would continue.
The autonomous units had been a stroke of master planning, so ingenious that it was logical the giant
of Eurasia had devised a similar plan.

BY THE time the bombs had all been used, or their stations rendered incapable of functioning, the
major cities were blackened, gutted, inoperative masses of destruction. Soon the invading armies no
longer received orders, or supplies of rations and arms. When this happened they knew governments
they represented had ceased to exist. They were forced to live by the ingenuity of their commanders and
their ability to forage. They could not even capitulate; there was no one to whom they could surrender.
Those armies with weak commanders fell apart and one by one their men died at the hands of hostile
natives, or hunger.
The armies under, strong commanders, like General Andrei Koski, of the Eurasian command, carved
themselves a place in their new environment.