"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Room of Lost Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

My in-room computer system can access the public library of the
base, and I start there, sitting on one of the most comfortable chairs IтАЩve
ever used in my life, and scrolling through list upon list of recorded
information pertaining to Commander Trekov himself.

It takes me nearly three days, but I finally find visual and audio files of
his arrival on the base. No holographic files, at least not yet. But the visual
and audio ones are the first IтАЩve found of the Commander at all.

HeтАЩs imposing, nearly six-seven, which is tall for someone who spent
his life in ships. His walk marks him as planet-raised as well, as do his thick
bones and well-defined muscles.

HeтАЩs not a handsome man, although he might have been once. His
face is care-lined and his eyes are sad. His hair is cut shortтАФregulation
then as nowтАФand he has a fastidiousness that seems extreme even in this
military environment.

I freeze one of the images of his face and frame it. Then I set it, as a
holopicture, on the tabletop near my work station. I used to do this with
ships that I was searching for. Ships that had disappeared or whose wrecks
existed somewhere in a grid that no one had bothered searching for
decades.

The images are always of the ships when they were new. I used to
compare that image with the wreck when I found it, not to find my way
around it but so that I could get a sense of what hopes were lost in the
shipтАЩs ultimate destruction.

But the image I keep of Ewing Trekov isnтАЩt of his youth, but of what he
looked like toward the end. ItтАЩs an acknowledgement that IтАЩm searching for
the part of him thatтАЩs left over, the skeleton, the frame, the bits and pieces
that survived.
 I am no closer to getting him out of that Room by staring at his image
than I got close to a wreck by staring at the original image of a ship. But I
feel closer. I feel like this image holds something important, something IтАЩm
missing.

Or maybe, something IтАЩm not yet allowed to see.

****

There are actually people on the outpost who remember Ewing
Trekov. TheyтАЩre old now, but most of them still work in their respective
departments.

All of them are willing to talk with me and after days of interviews, only
one medical officer seems to have a story that I canтАЩt find in the records.

Her name is Nola Batinet. She wants to meet in the officersтАЩ mess.