"Katharine Kerr - Resurrection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

in fact, is a twofer, dying once in the desert near the wreckage of her plane and once again on the
operating table of the field hospital. Two termination incidents, two resurrection events. It gives her a
certain status.

As she drinks her juice, she is thinking about her book. That's what she calls it, "her book," though in
fact, the science fiction novel in question, HUNTER'S NIGHT, was written by a man named Albert
Allonsby. Over a year ago now she picked it out of a bin of paper-books in the Athens USO officers'
lounge and carried it round with her for another month, reading a few pages whenever she got a few
minutes. A good book, well-written, set in a vastly important and meaningful war on some other planet in
some other era far far away from the tedious peace maintenance campaign that she was stuck fighting,
and in it there were a couple of really solid alien races and some finely designed starships that even a pilot
like herself could believe in тАФ but she never had the chance to finish the damn thing.

"Only sixty-five lousy pages from the end."

Tiffany often speaks aloud without realizing it these days. Here in the lounge it doesn't matter; on the
street, people do turn and stare. White Jason grins at her.

"You thinking about that fucking book again?"

"Well, jeez, I was just gonna find out who the traitor was, the one who blew up the AI unit, y'know?"

Black Jason rolls his eyes skyward, but there's no malice in his gesture, merely the shared comfort of a
long-standing joke.

"Maybe they gonna make a movie out of it one day. Then you find out."

"Rather find the damn book. They always change stuff for the movies."

The two Jasons nod in unison. Tiffany hauls herself up, judging with a fine ear the creak in her bad leg,
broken in six different places during the ground impac-tion event. She is one of the lucky ones. She
bailed out in timeтАФwell, nearly in time.Spinning downward. 'White chute popping, so slaw, so late.
Black smoke. Failure. Black smoke, desert, white light in a blinding burst. Failure .

"Captain." Hazel Weng-Chang stands in the doorway. "Doctor has a few extra minutes. Want to check
out early?"

"Yeah, I do, thanks. Gotta stop at a bookstore on the way home."

Doctor Rosas's office has walls of forest green and restful blue, blank expanses of color, not a picture,
clock, bookshelf, knickknack, not one thing that might confuse the eyes and agitate the torn neurons of
her patients. Her desk, too, spreads out bare, not one thing on it except for the chart or file that she might
need for the appointment at hand. The light filters through diffusion panels near the ceiling. Her gray hair is
short, her doctor's smock pale blue and utterly unadorned; she speaks quietly, she moves her hands
slowly or not at all. When Tiffany comes in, Rosas smiles but sits tombstone still, leaning back in her chair
unmoving until her patient has taken the chair opposite and come toa complete stop herself. Tiffany sees
the white shapes on the polished desk and recognizes them instantly as the printout from her last few
neuro sessions. Just two months ago they would have been white shapes and nothing more.
 "You keep on doing very very well, captain. I'm so glad. Don't worry. You'll get the purple guy out of
the maze yet."