"Diane Duane - Harbinger 2 - Storm At Eldala" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

through the steamy glass at the mirror where he could see nothing. He knew what would be visible there.
He was looking more lined than he ought to at twenty-six. The stress. We've been through a lot in the last
half-year. When things even out, when we find work we like better, when the money settles down to a
steadier income . . .

When I find out who framed me.

That was the underlying problem, the one not likely to be solved any time soon. That was what they were
probably already settling in to discuss out in the sitting room, Enda over a tumbler of kalwine, and Helm
over something stronger.

Gabriel shook his head, scattering water and lather. The water spat down from the shower head above,
and he started counting so as not to be caught with soap all over him when it ran out. Every drop would
be recycled, of course. It had not been like this on his old ship, which had water to spare. Whole
bathtubs full of it, Gabriel thought. Hot. You could splash it around. There had been times over the past
six months when, while hunted from one world to the next, shot at, driven into hiding, kidnapped and
attacked with knives and guns and God knew what else, the thing that had really bothered Gabriel was
that he couldn't have a real bath.
The shower warning chimed. Gabriel scrubbed frantically, turning to rinse himself. Bang! The water valve
slammed itself shut, unforgiving. Gabriel stood there, steaming and wistful, trying to see over his shoulder
whether he had gotten the last of the soap off his back.

He got out, pulled a towel out of the dispenser, dried himself, and put the towel down the chute as well.
In the delivery-side hatch was his other shipsuit, rigorously clean and a little too stiff for his tastes. Gabriel
shook it out, slipped into it, stroked the seam closed, and did a couple of deep knee-flexes to let the
fabric remember where he bent. He paused before the minor to make sure the nap of his hair was lying in
the right direction before walking out.
The place smelled of hot foodтАФsomething Helm had brought over from Longshot with him.
"I swear," Gabriel said as he came up the hall, pausing by one of the storage cabinets to get out a
tumbler, "I don't know where you get that stuff from. It's not like you don't shop in the same places we
do. Why does your food always smell so terrific?"
"It doesn't dare do otherwise," said the rough gravelly voice in the sitting room. There was Helm
Ragnarsson, sitting immense in the foldout guest chair, which had extended itself valiantly to its full extent
in both dimensions but was sagging under Helm's massive and muscular bulk, originally engineered for
heavy-planet and high-pressure work. "Here you are finally," Helm said. "Still wet behind the ears."
"Yeah, thanks loads," Gabriel said. "I'm going to have to fix that thing again, you know that? We should
make you bring your own chair." He turned to Enda, picked up the kalwine bottle sitting by the steaming
covered casserole on the table, which was now folded down between the chairs. "Refill?"
"Yes, thank you, Gabriel," she said, and held out her glass.
Gabriel poured for them both, then lifted the lid of the casserole. "What is this?"
"Eshk in red brandy sauce," Helm said.
"Now you did not buy that at the package commissary at Iphus Collective," said Enda. "Helm, confess.
You cooked it."
Helm grinned, and the look made Gabriel think that the top of his head might fall off. There was always
something unexpected about this huge, near-rectangular brick of a man with his meter-wide shoulders
and his iron-colored hair, suddenly producing one of these face-wide grins. It was the kind of smile you
could imagine a carnivore producing at a social gathering of prey animals. "And if I did?" Helm said.
"Then I think we should eat it," Gabriel said. "Plates?"
Enda reached under the table. "I have them here. Helm, tongs or a fork?"
"Tongs, please."