"Maxine McArthur - Times Past" - читать интересную книгу автора (McArthur Maxine)

grease and even the soil between them was hard with it.

Oh hell. My stomach rose as the smell of garbage and open drains mixed
with oil. Have to be sick. I bent over a drain and threw up into it.
Full of rubbish. Bones, shit, scraps of un recyclable plastic. Stiff,
bloated rat.

I wiped my mouth on the hem of my shirt. Didn't feel better. Mouth
dry and foul, head pounding. I should have known the black market
dealer wouldn't bother to turn up. Should have listened to Grace, who
told me to stay in bed when I got sick. "Haven't got a clue, have you?
How to look after yerself when you're crook," she'd said.

Of course I didn't have a clue. In my century we didn't get sick.

Grace Chenin helped me when I first arrived in the out-town, and I'd
lived most of the time with her. As far as she knew, I was Maria
Valdon, a political refugee who'd paid to be smuggled into the country
then, like many residents of the out-town, been abandoned without ID
or
money and drifted into the out-town. It was such a common story here,
nobody gave me a second thought. Who would believe my real story?
That I was Alvarez Maria Halley, space habitat systems engineer, flat
space drive mechanic, and head of a space station orbiting a planet
thousands of light years away and nearly a hundred years in the future.
That I arrived in the out-town because the ship I was testing
malfunctioned and marooned me here on Earth. I couldn't tell them I
was stuck in this time and space unless I re-entered the jump point I
came through. That would involve explaining the use of hyperspace to a
species that couldn't even provide all of its members with clean
drinking water, let alone devise a unified field theory. To re-enter
the jump point I needed a jump-capable ship. None existed on Earth in
April 2023. But in three weeks this would change. On May 1, the
Invidi will arrive on Earth and identify themselves as peaceful aliens.
They'll bring medical and agricultural technology that will allow
humans to transform this world into a better place. In 2060 the four
alien species of Invidi, Q'chn , Melot, and Bendari will form the
Confederacy of Allied Worlds. Twenty-five years later, Earth will join
that Confederacy, which by my time, 2122, will have grown to thirteen
members. It must happen, because I'm here. The fact that a human
traveled to the past in a ship using Invidi technology proves that the
future will happen as it's supposed to. Doesn't it? I shook my head
to clear it of useless speculation, and stubbed my toe on a piece of
loose concrete. Leave the theory for later. Right now I needed to get
back to my work place and put this money away safely. The sun had
dropped behind the uneven line of buildings. Hope I'm on the right
track now.
I'd gone looking for a black market laser because I needed it to
contact the Invidi once they arrived. I was planning to use a
reflecting telescope's dish, inverted, to send a pulse along the