"Barbara Hambly - Windrose 1 - The Silent Tower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

one of the yobos on the janitorial staff might have dropped a cigarette into a trash bin,
though the light looked too small and too steady for a fire.
It was, as she had thought, a candle. An old-fashioned tin candleholder, rested
on a corner of the monitor desk. A gold edge of light danced over the dark edges of
the three massive monoliths of the Cray, over the huge six-foot graphics projection
monitor screens and the smaller CRTs and keyboards. As she came up the slight ramp
which raised the level of the room above the subfloor wiring, the single red eye of the
power-light regarded her somberly beside that seed of anachronistic brightness.
Now what the hell was a candle . . . ?
It was her natural nervous timidity which saved her. She knew she hadn't heard
the man behind her, but it was as if, half-ready, she felt the dark shape loom up
behind her a moment before hands closed around her throat. Certainly her hands were
there, clutching at the long, cold fingers as they tightened; she cow-kicked back and
up, half-conscious of her foot tangling with fabric.
The grip loosened and fumbled; the gray, buzzing roar which had filled her ears
and the terrible clouded feeling in her head abated for one instant, and she whipped
her right hand down to the hammer ready in her purse. There was breath, hot against
her temple, and the smell of woodsmoke, old wool, and herbs in her nostrils. She
struck back over her left shoulder with all her strength.
Then she was falling. Her head struck the floor, hard under the thin, coarse
nylon of the rug. She had a last, confused glimpse of the candle propped before the
monitor, of a shadow bending over herтАФof something else on the wall . . .
She came to choking on ammonia. Her flailing fist was caught in a large, black
hand, her scream was nothing more than a wheezing croak.
The face bending over hers focusedтАФworried, black, and middle-aged. "You all
right, miss?"
She blinked, her heart hammering and her whole body shaking with an
adrenaline rush that nearly turned her sick. The upside-down beam of a flashlight at
floor level gleamed brassily off a security badge and made dark lines along the
regulation creases of the guard's light-blue shirt as he helped her to sit up.
"Did you get him?" she asked confusedly.
"Who?"
Her hands fumbled under the tangle of her blond hair, to feel the bruises on her
throat. She swallowed, and it hurt. Her head achedтАФshe realized she was lucky she'd
hit the slight give of the raised floor and not the cement subfloor beneath. "Somebody
was in here. He grabbed me from behind . . ." She looked back at the desk. The candle
was gone.
The guard removed a walkie-talkie from his belt. "Ken? Art here. We've got a
report of an intruder in Building Six, near the main computer room." He turned back
to her. "Did you get a look at him?"
She shook her head. "He was taller than me . . ." She stopped herself ruefully.
Everyone was taller than she. "But I think I heard him walking in the hallways
earlier."
"What time?" he asked.
"About two. IтАФI saw a light in here."
"And he attacked you with this?" The guard held up the hammer, protected
from his hand by a handkerchief and gripped by the very end of the handle.
Joanna blushed. "No," she said, feeling very foolish. "I had that in my purse."
The guard cast a startled glance at her purse, then saw the size of it and nodded
at least partial understanding.