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

"I'm fine."

The pines whistled with the mountain wind; even in July, it was chilly up here. As I drove the boat, I
watched a hawk work the thermals off toward the granite massif that sheltered the headwaters of the
Kicking Horse River. There was something seriously wrong with me if Kelly's use of my first name felt as
intimate as a kiss.

It was about time I called my boss, Marge Williams, and returned to Maryland again for a while.

Somehow, I didn't have much success fleeing Emerald Lake. The next time I came back, I came back
for good. The ostensible excuse was Marge's gentle insistence тАФ the government still wanted whatever
information Kelly Maclnnes could provide badly enough to make it a permanent assignment. The
potential value of what Nick had done, even with its fatal flaws, outweighed any cost of my time and
effort.

But the real reason was Kelly. NSA couldn't force me, given the radiation riskтАФ and they didn't have to.

I returned in October. To my surprise, she was waiting at the park landing zone as the helicopter came in.

"What took you so long!" she shouted out over the whirring of the blades as I hopped down from the
cabin. "We've had no less than seven dimple-fans succeed in breaching security since you left."

"Seven! Guess I better get back on the job." Of course I had already been informed about the handful of
trespassers who weren't bright enough to be scared off by radioactive falloutтАФMarge had used them as
a further argument to get me to return. For the good of the project, of course. And Kelly's safety. That
and a huge bonus I could put aside to finance my medical bills if I ended up with cancer in a decade or
two.

It all seemed worth it with Kelly glad to see me. Perhaps it was just the basic human need for
companionship, but I was happy to delude myself into thinking it was more.

By our third year at Emerald Lake, it began to appear that the world had forgotten us. Over the winter,
attempts to breach park security had dwindled to nothing, and even with the arrival of spring and the
second anniversary of the appearance of the dimple, there had been less than half a dozen. Of course, I
still spoke with headquarters nearly every week. We also had occasional contact with maintenance
personnel and an RCMP trooper by the name of Sergeant Perry who actually came by on horseback
when the weather was good and sometimes brought us old newspapers. I went back to Maryland
regularly for my quarterly mission reviews and radiation assessments, and we were connected with the
outside world through the Internet, but for the most part we were alone.

Me, Kelly, and the dimple.

She looked at that damn dimple every day as if Nick Maclnnes was going to come walking out of it and
embrace her. I just looked at it.

And so we hadn't become lovers. To me she was a widow, but Kelly thought of herself as a wife.

An extremely loyal wife.

We got along well enough, had even become friends of sorts. That is if you disregarded the fact that I