"Paul Preuss - Venus Prime 1 - Breaking Strain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

A moment later the ship streaked across the open, snowy flat, toward the range of distant, much higher
peaks that glistened in the sun.


тАЬWe have visual acquisition.тАЭ

On a videoplate screen in a basement room fifteen hundred miles to the east, a small group of men and
women watched the helicopter racing over the ground, its sharp, highly magnified image observed from
a satellite four hundred miles above it.

тАЬWhy isnтАЩt she using evasion protocols?тАЭ

тАЬMaybe she doesnтАЩt know how.тАЭ

тАЬShe knows how to fly the thing.тАЭ The speaker was a man in his fifties with silver-gray hair clipped
close to his scalp. He wore a dark-gray wool suit and patternless gray silk tie over a light-gray cotton
shirt; it was business attire, but it might as well have been a military uniform.

The manтАЩs outburst was an unanswerable accusation; he got no reply but a nervous shifting of feet.

A woman touched his sleeve, caught his eye, jerked her chin. They stepped into the shadows of the
control room, away from the others. тАЬWhat is it?тАЭ he rasped.

тАЬIf McPhee actually did restore her short-term memory using synthetic-cellular implant, she may be
accessing skills she acquired before intervention,тАЭ she whispered. She was a handsome woman, as
clipped and gray and rigid as he was, her dark eyes pools of shadow in the dim room.

тАЬYou led me to believe sheтАЩd already forgotten everything she saw or did for the last three years,тАЭ he
said petulantly, straining to keep his voice down.

тАЬThe permanenceтАУthat is, the degreeтАУof retroactive amnesia due to loss of short-term memory is often
unpredictable . . .тАЭ

тАЬWhy am I learning this now?тАЭ he snarled, loud enough to make heads turn.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaub...0-%20Venus%20Prime%201%20-%20Breaking%20Strain.html (17 of 182)23-12-2006 18:54:42
 ARTHUR C. CLARKE'S VENUS PRIME: VOLUME I



тАЬ. . . except that, as ever, we can be completely confident that she will never remember anything that
occurred after the intervention.тАЭ The gray woman paused. тАЬUntil the reintervention. Before today, that
is.тАЭ

The two of them fell silent, and for a moment no one in the dark room spoke. They all studied the
helicopter, which was fleeing its own shadow over snowy hummocks, over frozen ponds, among pines
and aspens, down steep defiles, a darting dragonfly with its twin interlocking rotors fluttering like
membranous wings in the crosshairs of the tracking satellite, but with a more evident purpose to its
flight.