"Alastair Reynolds - Digital to Analogue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

they were meant to sound. ThereтАЩd be a rising and falling signal, on top of
the engine sound, as the spikes of the sound waves moved in and out of
phase with one another, several times a second. And heтАЩd move the
outspread fingers of his hands across one another in illustration. HeтАЩd been
an audio engineer, my granddad, for Piccadilly Radio, knew all sorts of
arcana. I think it was he who made me go into electrical engineering, he that
set me on course for my privacy-violating job for BT . . . though in fairness
the old feller couldnтАЩt have known better.

I opened my eyes to a chipped surface of beige plaster. The tip of
my nose was an inch or so from the wall; I was lying in the medical
тАШrecoveryтАЩ position on a soft surface. I tried moving; no joy. I was
immobilised, either by weakness or restraint. Hands rolled me to my other
side, so that I faced her. My mouth was free, no longer intubated or
gagged. She was a pale ovoid, against a backdrop of olive green. From the
angle of my gaze I couldnтАЩt see her face, just the blurred whiteness of her
waist.

Then it all clicked: hospital surroundings. That explained the shabby
decor, the pervasive air of decrepitude. She was a nurse or ward attendant,
wearing a white overcoat and a stethoscope. Behind her were green
curtains, the kind they used to fence off patients during a bed-bath. I could
hear the sound of medical equipment behind the curtain, birdlike bleeps
and clicks. Hey, some sod was worse than me. Life was looking up. I
couldnтАЩt move much, but that didnтАЩt mean a lot. Hell, IтАЩd just been through a
bad experience, right. I was probably suffering post-traumatic stress
disorder. In 1962, Vietnam seemed like just another foreign war . . . Ha
ha.

Then she spoke; the same voice IтАЩd heard in the ambu-lance. тАШAh
good,тАЩ she said. тАШAwake. ThatтАЩs perfect. WeтАЩll be over and done before we
know it. Just a few simple tests should be sufficient.тАЩ

I strained my neck to look up. Her white coat was loosely tied over a
black T-shirt decorated with a half-familiar pattern, like a contour map of the
lunar surface, etched in white. The stethoscope hung down over her chest.
Her hair was raked back from her brow, tied in a utilitarian tail. Her lips were
pallid, eyes masked by circular black sunglasses. A pair of phones framed
her head, bulky black things. Aviation phones, a cable running to a belted
powerpack. Noise-cancelling jobs, like helicopter pilots wore. I thought of
the тАШcopter IтАЩd seen that night, but no ... there couldnтАЩt be a connection,
surely.

Strange accessories for a nurse, I thought. And then: a kind of out of
head experience, a soft voice from afar, saying: This is your rational mind
speaking. YouтАЩre in the deepest shit imaginable, but you wonтАЩt admit it,
not until that EтАЩs through with its business . . . And I ignored it, eyes
tracking over her coat (more like a scientistтАЩs than a doctorтАЩs coat, I
decided), picking out streaked splatters of rust-red.