"Steven Popkes - Holding Pattern" - читать интересную книгу автора (Popkes Steven)

Coban stared at him. This he had not expected.

"I have come to each of you," Tikal continued. "To apologize for taking away your faces, your memories,
and your lives."

"No apology to the thousands of people we killed? Surely we can spare a tear for them. Or the three
hundred American soldiers we slaughtered? I wouldn't cry for them, but I suppose we could manage to
toss them a couple of bucks--"

''Stop it!"
Coban tilted his head and watched Tikal for a moment. "Did I struggle?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Did I resist? Or did I volunteer?"

"It doesn't matter--"

"You are wrong," Coban said, interrupting him. "If I volunteered, then you have nothing for which to
apologize."

"I took your face--"

"--which I may have freely given." Coban turned aside and let it go. "Where have you been?"

"To all of you, one at a time."

"No doubt. But I meant where have you been all this time? Where did they station you?"

Tikal didn't say anything for a moment. "Washington."

"Ah," Coban said dryly and fell silent.

"What do you mean?"

Coban spread his hands. "I meant nothing by it."

"It sounded ... critical."

Coban watched the drones. They had settled into a figure eight pattern over their heads, each group
chasing the other. "We have the same memories. It seems more than coincidental that the one who
determines himself to be the original has all this time been quartered in the capital of those who deposed
us."

"None of the others questioned me like this."

Coban shrugged. "We began with different brains even though we had the same memories and
motivations. Some differences were bound to show up. What happens now?"

Tikal looked uncertain. "I want absolution. I sent thousands to their death in the weapons breeding camps