"David Drake - RCN 04 - Glory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

But it would be impolite to bring out the flat rectangle now, and Adele had already come
uncomfortably close to being impolite to Lira Kearnes. Besides, there was a better--if not as natural to

Adele--way to learn what the lady was talking about: she could ask.

"I'm not aware of having met your son, mistress," Adele said as footmen in violet frock coats

swept open an unobtrusive door and closed it behind them. The drawing room beyond was tiled in

patterns of circles, whorls, and multi-pointed stars. Instead of ordinary light fixtures, a screen brightened

into the holographic image of an arched double window looking out onto a palm-fringed beach. Beyond,

the sea combed over sand toward the window.

"Do sit, please," Kearnes said. There were chairs and a table, but she gestured instead to the

ottoman beneath the 'window'.

Adele seated herself carefully, folding her hands in her lap. The tips of her fingers rested on the

hard, hidden outlines of her data unit.

Kearnes sat on the other end of the ottoman and stared at the upholstery between them for a

moment. When she looked up, she began, "It's my third son, Oller. He's joined the navy, you see. I didn't

want him to go, but... Oller's a very high spirited boy, extremely bright but, well, he has his own ideas.

He'd signed on with a privateer, and it was only because my husband agreed to get him a special

appointment as a midshipman that Oller gave up that plan."

"The RCN can be a fine career for a high spirited youth, mistress," Adele said, choosing her

words carefully. "It has been for my friend Lieutenant Leary, certainly."

But Daniel was high spirited. Reading between the lines of a mother's description, Oller Kearnes

was a spoiled brat with romantic notions of what it meant to be one of scores or hundreds of people

sealed in a metal box so full of equipment that even to turn around required caution.

Danger is another thing that's more romantic to read about than the reality of blood and burns

and the screams transcending age and gender and even humanity. Pain can be a sound, pure sound, and

pictures can't prepare you for the smell of a man trying to stuff his intestines back into his ripped

abdomen.