"David Drake - Men Like Us (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

like a black jewel. The Blast had sometimes preserved and had sometimes destroyed; this once it had
done both in near equality.
Ssu-ma would have stood out without the artificial lighting. She had the same trim, beautiful figure as the
girl she had been the night she stared into the sky above Lop Nor and saw dawn blaze three hours early.
Now that figure shone blue, brighter even than the spreading fire that ate through the wall of the power
plant behind her.
The crowd was scattering toward homes and toward the river. No one approached the platform except
the two Changelings walking toward their fellow.
The chief threw up his revolver and snapped it three times, four, and at the fifth attempt an orange flash
and the thump of a shot in the open air. Five of the policemen were triggering their automatic weapons
and tugging at
the cocking pieces to spill misfired rounds on the platform. But the old guns could still fire. Shots slapped
and tore at the night in short bursts that pattered over the flesh of the Changelings like raindrops on thick
dust. And still they came, walking toward Smith and the platform.
Incredibly, the antitank rocket ignited when the sixth policeman tugged its lanyard. In ignorance he was
holding the tube against his shoulder like a conventional weapon. The back-blast burned away the man's
arm and chest in a ghastly simulacrum of Kozinski's mutilation. The rocket corkscrewed, but chance
slammed it into Ssu-ma's chest. The red blast momentarily covered the Changeling's own fell glow. Her
body splattered like the pulp of a grapefruit struck by a maul. Simultaneously the front wall of the power
plant tore apart, snuffing the arcs dancing madly between the bomb casings.
Then, evident in the sudden darkness, the bits of Ssuma's glowing protoplasm began to draw together
like droplets of mercury sliding in the bowl of a spoon. Her head had not been damaged. The waiting
eyes smiled up at the platform.
Only Carter still stood before the casings. He had thrust the muzzle of his M16 into his mouth and was
trying to fire the weapon with his outstretched finger. The round under the hammer misfired.
The power plant exploded again, a gout of lava that loosened the hillside beneath it and sprayed the
village. Wood and cloth began to burn in a pale imitation of what was happening across the creek. In
slagging down, the reactor was fusing the rock and the hulls of the remaining bombs. Plutonium flowed
white-hot with its own internal reactions, but it was spread too thin to self-trigger another
Blast. The creek roared and boiled away as the rain of rock and molten metal spewed into it. The vapor
that had been a plume over the power plant was now a shroud to wrap the burning village.
"I hadn't called you yet," Smith said, shouting over the tumult as he clasped Kozinski's hand with his own
left hand. He extended his right to the smiling Ssu-ma.
"We heard the siren," the Ukrainian said, his voice strange for coming from a mouth that was half
bone-the half that had been turned away from the Strike that vaporized his infantry company, he had
once explained.
"We could all tell they weren't burning coal, couldn't we?" Susu-ma added.
The three travelers began groping through the night, through the smoke and the screaming. "I don't think
we've ever checked whether the Oconee plant was still operable," Smith said. "It'd be a good time to
see."
Kozinski shrugged. "We ought to get back to England some time. It's been too long since we were
there."
"No, there's time for that." Smith argued. "Nobody there is going to build a fission plant as long as there's
one man left to tell what we did when we found the one at Harewell."
A pair of burning buildings lighted their path, sweeping the air clear with an angry updraft. Kozinski
squinted, then reached out his hand to halt Ssu-ma. "Your birthmark," he said, pointing to the star-shaped
blotch beneath the girl's left breast. "It used to be on the right side."