"Nancy Kress - The Battle of Long Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy) The Battle of Long Island
by Nancy Kress **** Over by the mess tent one of my younger nurses is standing close to a Special Forces lieutenant. I watch her face tip up to his, her eyes wide and shining, moonlight on her cheekbones. He reaches out one hand - his fingernails are not quite clean - and touches her brown hair where it falls over her shoulder, and the light on her skin trembles. I know that later tonight they will disappear into her tent, or his. Later this week they will walk around the compound with their arms around each otherтАЩs waists, sit across from each other at mess, and feed each other choice bits of chow, oblivious to the amused glances of their friends. Later this month - or next month, or the one after that, if this bizarre duty goes on long enough - she will be pale and distraught, crumpling letters in one hand. She will cry in the supply tent. She will tell the other nurses that he fed her lies. She will not hear orders, or will carry them out red-eyed and wrong, endangering other lives and despising her own. She will be useless to me, and I will transfer her out and start over with another. Or maybe it wonтАЩt happen that way. An alternate future: He will snap at his buddies, volunteer for extra duty near the Hole, become careless with some red- or homespun-coated soldier stumbling forward with a musket or bayonet. HeтАЩll kill somebody or - less likely - get killed himself. Or maybe heтАЩll just snap at the wrong person - his captain, say. HeтАЩll be transferred out. If he kills an Arrival, General RobinsonтАЩs wife and daughters are members of the D.A.R. The two people by the mess tent, of course, donтАЩt see it this way. They like the same movies, were snubbed by the same people in high school, voted the same that theyтАЩre in love. It follows that they understand each other, can see to the bottoms of each othersтАЩs souls. The other military couples hey know - the ones who have divorsed, or who havenтАЩt the affairs on leave; the angry words on the parade ground at dawn - have nothing to do with them. They are different. they are unique. When people can see the truth so plain around them, why do they persist in believing some other reality? тАЬMajor Peters! YouтАЩre needed in Recovery! Quick!тАЭ I leave my tent and tear across the compound at dead run. We have only three people in Recovery; one of the weird laws of the Hole seems to be that they seldom come through it if theyтАЩre going to recover. Musket balls in the belly or heart, shell explosions that have torn off half a head. Eighty-three percent of the Arrivals are dead a few minutes after they fall through the Hole. Another 11 percent live longer but never regain consciousness. That leaves us with 6 percent who eventually talk, although not to us. After we repair the flesh and boost the immune system, the Army sends heavily armored trucks to move them out of our heavily armored compound to somewhere else. The Pentagon? We arenтАЩt told. Somewhere there are three soldiers from KichlineтАЩs Riflemen, a fieldgrade officer under Lord Percy, and a shell-shocked corporal in homespun, all talking to the best minds the country thinks it can find. This time I want to talk first. The soldier who has finally woken up is a grizzled veteran who came through dressed in breeches, boots, and light coat. ItтАЩs summer on the other side of the Hole: The Battle of Long Island was fought on August 27, 1776. Unlike most Arrivals, this one staggered through the Hole without his rifle or bayonet, although he had a |
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