"Alex Irvine - Volunteers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Irvine Alexander C)

he'd had too much to drink he would display an appendectomy scar and tell the story of how he'd gotten
it from a Japanese bayonet on Saipan. If Akira Ikuma was around, that was his cue to say that Victor
was lucky it hadn't been Akira's bayonet because Akira would have finished the job, and hell yes Akira
had been on Saipan, the only survivor of a grenade attack on his bunker and then later the last man on
board a troop bus leaving Hiroshima, looking up at the drone of a bomber as they headed north to
Osaka.

And on and on. They were all crazy. I watched them through spex and plotted escape. I could tune the
spex to see bones, temperature fluctuations, brain activity, anything. I saw that Miss Callahan, who I
remembered as a biologist from when I was little but who now seemed to be some kind of secretary, had
large sacs under the skin of her breasts, and I nearly suggested she see a doctor before suffering an
attack of discretion which lasted long enough for me to do some research and discover the history of
cosmetic surgery.

Someone else noticed my black eye. Another nerdy kid named Vince Tukwiler, who glared at the world
from his side of an invulnerable barrier composed of equal parts scorn and fear. Two days later he leaned
against my locker and said, "Don't go to the movies tonight."

"Movies are the only thing keeping me from killing myself," I said. Almost meaning it.

"That's why you should go here instead," Vince said, and handed me a slip of paper. I reached for it, and
he moved his hand. "Look at this and then destroy it. I shit you not, eat it or burn it or flush it down the
toilet, but get rid of it. Okay?"

"Sure, okay," I said, just so he'd give it to me. He did, and I'll never forget the look that came over his
face. Like he'd just taken a terrible chance on someone who didn't deserve it.

The paper had a place and time on it. I took a look, let the information stick in my head, and ate the
paper right there in the hall. Whatever it meant, I didn't want to take a chance on anyone seeing me with
it.

That was how I found out about the Lodge.
├Дt
One day I sat down and tried to do the math. I had been born in 2064, and taking into account relativity
and the rest of it I was two hundred and seven years old, but physically I was fourteen, and anyway
everyone I knew insisted it was 1956тАФthey argued about Eisenhower and Nixon, for God's sakeтАФand
by that count I wouldn't show up for another hundred and eight years.

I seized on the idea that I was waiting to be born and clung to it.
├Дt
You know, I haven't put on my dad's spex since we left? I don't trust lenses any more. Through the spex
I thought I could see the truth, but all I was getting was another layer of masks.

They were your masks, though. Weren't they? Loving masks.
 ├Дt
The mission plan for years four and five called for nutritional self-sufficiency through agriculture, and they
got there, but there was nothing in the mission plan about a bowling alley. Instead of adding onto the
school, the city council redirected materials and labor into the construction of Bel-Mark Lanes.

Even though it was insane, I had to admit that the Lanes made for a good time. Ten alleys, four pool