"Geoffrey Landis - Ecopoiesis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)

location, I'm afraid."
"Pity. If we could read their diaries, it would help, let us see if anything was
going wrong before the blow-up. Oh, well. Do what you can, and we'll get
together again tomorrow and check progress."
As we talked, Leah's face had slowly been reddening. Her eyes were pale circles;
her nose and lips and chin, where the rebreather had covered them, a pale
diamond. The rest of her face slowly turned a brilliant scarlet, deepening even
as I watched. She raised a hand and brushed her hair away from her face. "Ouch."
She looked puzzled.
Reflexively, I raised a hand to my temple. My own touch was like a whip, a
brilliant stab of heat.
Tally looked at the two of us, grinning. "Well, well, aren't you two the sight.
Look like you're wearing warpaint. Painted up like two owls, you are."
Tally's dark skin showed nothing, but Leah reached over and gently touched her
face.
"Yow! Hey, that hurts! Shit!"
"Ultraviolet," Leah said. "It's the hard ultraviolet. CO-two is too difficult
for UV to split; it doesn't form an ozone layer. The climate is cloudy and cold,
but the hard UVs still get right down to the surface. I'd say, we've been a bit
stupid, going out unprotected. Good thing we weren't out much longer."
"Shit," said Tally. "Why didn't you say something sooner?"
"The hab has to have some kind of a med kit," Leah said. "Maybe we'd better see
if it has any sunburn ointment."
#
At night, in the cubby. I didn't know what to expect.
She wasn't in the bunk. She was sitting in the cubby's one small chair, staring
into space. I got into the bunk, on one side, making a space for her.
She didn't move. Fifteen minutes. Half an hour.
I'd done something wrong. But she hadn't objected! I thought--
Damn.
The silence in the cubby was oppressive.
At last I said, "Leah?"
She said nothing.
"Leah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to try to--"
In the dark it was hard to tell where her eyes focused, but I could see the
slight movement of her head and knew that she was looking at me.
"David." She paused for a moment, and just before I was about to speak again, to
apologize to her, she continued, "I've seen bodies before."
It was not what I'd expected her to say. "Bodies?"
"I thought I was used to it." Her voice was tiny in the darkness. "I thought I
could handle it. I can handle it."
It was odd. The bodies hadn't bothered me. They had been so far decomposed that
they were barely recognizable as having been human at all. And they hadn't
seemed to bother her, not in the daytime.
"I've seen too many bodies." And then she came into bed, turning to face away
from me. I held her. Her body was rigid, but she turned her face and pressed her
head into my side. "Too many, too many." Her breath was warm against my
shoulder. "It wasn't even anybody I knew. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to
stop crying now."
I touched her face. Her eyes were dry, but somewhere inside she seemed to be