"George Alec Effinger - Slow, Slow Burn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

there are too many even to begin to guess which one. She reads the

pages in a slow, husky voice. Kit thinks her voice is pretty damn

sexy. He likes everything about this girl, what little he knows. He

likes her bikini bottom, her torn shirt, her rumpled black hair and the

way she talks. After a moment, Kit hears what she is reading.

"Achtung! Achtung!" she says. Her voice has no accent, neither

German nor otherwise. She has brown skin, pale full lips and

Oriental eyes. "Achtung! Dreihundertneunundsiebzig....

F├╝nfundzwanzig." Then she begins reading a list of five-digit
9
 Slow, Slow Burn
by George Alec Effinger



numbers. She reads 25 groups of digits, meaningful only to the

audience listening to her frequency, reading the key to her code.

"Ende," she says. A moment later, after shifting to another

frequency, she begins again in Spanish. "¡Atenci├│n!

¡Atenci├│n!" More numbers, more signals. Kit would like to buy

the brown-skinned girl a drink, look into her black eyes, ask her if

she knows who might be listening to her broadcast.

Kit leaves the control room. She has never looked up, never

known for an instant that he was there. Kit walks back down the

stifling hallway. As he enters the small room, he sees Honey astride

the Italian boy. Kit checks the clock on the board, checks the script.

The recording is still precisely on schedule. He hasn't been missed.

Just as the girl at the microphone did not know he was there, Honey

does not know he has been gone.