"Jay Lake & Ruth Nestvold - The Canadian Who Came Almost All the Way Back from the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lake Jay)

I suggested calling in surveillance aircraft from the agency once more, but Kelly would have none of it.
"What good are they? That could have been one of us out in the snowтАФand no record of a breach in
security according to your precious Marge!"

She was right, of course. I had taken to carrying a pistol, something I'd never done before тАФI no longer
trusted my agency's ability to keep us safe. But that didn't have anything to do with whatever was
happening in the lake. "Their equipment could still give us valuable data on the dimple."

"And how do we know whether we can even trust their data?"

I wasn't happy with how Marge had handled the security breach either, but I still thought Kelly was
overreacting. "What if I ask for the CAF Orion again?"

Kelly shook her head. "No. Not if they're sent by your NSA."

Damn me if I didn't let her talk me out of it.

She couldn't talk university research teams out of coming, though. Suddenly, interest in the dimple
revived, and we were no longer as alone as we had been. It seemed like they were everywhere, bitching
about agency controls on their equipment, about the mosquitoes, about how we wouldn't let them use the
restrooms in the lodge. But we still didn't allow the journalists clamoring for a permit into the park.

Kelly eyed the researchers suspiciously, as if they were going to take her dimple away from her or
something. She sat in the tree fort and watched Emerald Lake with a simple pair of binoculars, jealous of
anyone else who went near it. I joined her sometimes, but the more the lake changed, the more she left
me. I didn't need that reminder of how far away she was again after what had seemed so close.

She was spending the day in the "dimple observatory" as usual when I brought her sandwiches one late
autumn afternoon. We had the park to ourselves again for a change, for what little it was worth. The
leaves of the maple around her were brilliant with shades of orange and red and yellow, but Kelly only
had eyes for that damn dimple.

"Look at the way it's steaming," she said, hardly glancing at me as she took a peanut butter and jelly.
"Things are getting even warmer down there."

"Hm." I stared across the water, at the steam rising above the lake. It wasn't that hot, but there was
enough temperature differential with the air to build miniature fog banks that rolled down inside the dimple
and occasionally crept out. The first snow had not yet fallen, but the days were near freezing now. "You
expecting anything?"

"Entropic progression is speeding up," she said instead of answering my question. "Coming up on the
sixth anniversary of Nick's return."

Perhaps it was an answer.

By the time the snow started melting again in late March, the dimple was so wide and shallow it spilled
onto the shores of Emerald Lake and it was developing a noticeable bulge in the middle. The water was
quite warm.