"Simon Hawke - Time Wars 01 - The Ivanhoe Gambit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

soldiers in the back along with all their gear, delivered them to the appropriate grid, threw them on the
chronoplates and clocked them out.
Every soldier knew that there was nothing like a chrono-plate to induce sobriety. Somewhere in the
maelstrom of nonspecific time, what the enlisted personnel called the dead zone, there was an awful lot of
vomit floating around. Clocking out made most people very sick. Eventually, most soldiers got used to it
enough so that they could hang on to their food at least some of the time, but most people still barfed
upon transition. It was yet another glamorous aspect of time travel in the army. Occasionally, people
would get lost coming through and would become stranded in the limbo of the dead zone. No one ever
talked about it. There was at least one good thing that Lucas could say about the army. The booze was
cheap and it was excellent. It was possible to order literally anything. He had once been a vodka drinker,
but he had developed a preference for mulled ale, a taste he had picked up in the Middle Ages.
Jesse drank unblended scotch.
An army bar was never very noisy. There was an undertone of conversation, but there was never any
music and rarely any shouting, no matter how drunk anyone became. Soldiers were never together for
very long and chances were that when they separated, to go their different ways, they would never see
each other again. Lucas and Jesse sat in their tiny booth, holding hands across the table. There wasn't
anything romantic in it. Physical contact of some sort was important to soldiers. When, in the next few
minutes, they could be called away to ancient Rome or to the Six Day War in the 20th century, it seemed
important to reach out and touch someone, to be reassured of their reality.
"Do you ever wish that you could figure it all out?" said Jesse. She was already slightly drunk. "I
mean, I'm getting tired of being just a button for the refs to push. Hell, I've never even seen a ref. Back
there in Russia, in the middle of the goddam battle, would you believe it, I started thinking: if I live through
this, just how does that affect the point spread? How does it really work? Why am I doing this? I
would've thought that just trying to stay alive would have been enough to occupy all my attention."
Lucas had nodded, understanding completely. Jesse was still green and it was all new to her.
"Believe it or not," he told her, "you'll get used to it. There will come a time when you stop thinking
about it altogether. It won't make any difference whether or not your part in the action has any effect on
the resolution of some trade agreement or international incident a thousand years away. I like to think it
makes a difference, that what I'm doing really counts for something, but I don't dwell on it. Sometimes it's
best just to go on automatic pilot. Try to stay alive. Nothing else matters very much. It's strange, the sort
of things that can go through your mind in the middle of a battle. You can't really control it. The best thing
to do is try and put everything out of your mind. Just be empty. Don't think about the outcome.
Otherwise ..." He let it hang.
"Yeah," said Jesse, staring into her drink. "Ours is not to reason why, is that it?"
"Don't try to work it out, Jesse. It'll make you drop your guard."
"Thanks. I'll remember that." She sipped her scotch. "They tell you where you're clocking out to?"
"The Punic Wars."
"Oh. That could be pretty rough."
Lucas shrugged. "I'm about due for it, I guess. Knocking off Custer's 7th Cavalry was a piece of
cake. The Sioux had a wild celebration afterward, in honor of Yellowhair's demise. It was an easy hitch.
I figure I'm due for a tough one."
"I hate the waiting," Jesse said.
There wasn't much that he could say to that. It was something that all soldiers felt at one time or
another. Not the waiting to clock out, but the waiting for that one unlucky moment that turns out to be
your last.
There were soldiers all around them, some in the disposable transit fatigues, others already in uniform
as Hessians, Huns, Centurions, Green Berets and Vikings. Nothing about the year 2613 seemed very
real. They belonged to it, but it didn't feel like home, more like a part of some alcoholic dream. They
spent another five minutes together before Lucas heard his code called over the P.A. They looked at
each other, probably for the last time, and he left her sitting there, staring into her scotch and swirling the