"Robert Onopa - Area Seven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Onopa Robert)

***


тАЬIтАЩm getting a low-frequency crawl from the other skiff on the planet,тАЭ Tessa said when IтАЩd toggled back
into the shipтАЩs com system. Her voice was clipped with anxiety. тАЬTheyтАЩre calling in an тАШemergency event.тАЩ
тАЭ

тАЬAny details?тАЭ

тАЬNo, but listen to this. A skiffтАЩs lost on the first planet. Some kind of geomagnetic disturbance is tripping
up rescue-all sorts of equipment down. Survey teams across the fleet reporting very strange data.тАЭ

I could have told her then, and perhaps I should have, but words would just not come. How could I
convince her that what I had heard, what I had seen, was real without triggering an emergency of my
own? I checked my life support. Gasses in the nominal range, though I was building CO2 too
rapidly-hyperventilating? I had only an hour left in Area Seven, at the outside.

тАЬI want to come down and get you.тАЭ

The thought of Tessa on the surface, of both of us losing track of time, made me shiver. тАЬJust . . . a few
more minutes,тАЭ I said. тАЬWhatever you do, stay with the ship. We need someone to stay with the ship.тАЭ
тАЬSerge. . . .тАЭ

тАЬTessa, stay with the ship.тАЭ
***


From other suicides I heard more war stories-one from a foot soldier who ran from battle but ironically
found the courage to slit his own throat rather than face his sergeant. A large, doubled form, situated on a
low rise, the smaller shape entwined around the larger, turned out to be the painful twin suicide of an
exiled father and son.

Further north, they told me, lay the spirits of the conventionally violent, the murderers, the terrorists, the
thugs, wallowing in a river of ancient, boiling blood. South of us, towards the planetтАЩs equator, on a plain
of sand so hot that it suggested planetary processes fleet had never encountered before, resided those
guilty of more refined versions of the sin, the perverse, the falsifiers, perpetrators of violence against
nature on its most fundamental level.

When I finally turned back toward the skiff, an even taller shape caught my attention. It stood apart, a full
meter higher than anything else in sight, erect, with a kind of stately bearing. My life support was hovering
near reserve, but I made my way over.

I ran my hand over its surface. I used my hammer to pry a section free. In its place on the trunk the
blood-red quicksilver bubbled out, as if under pressure.

тАЬSpeak to me,тАЭ I whispered. тАЬTell me who you are.тАЭ

A sad voice answered:

I was the next to rule.