"S. M. Stirling - Conquistador" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

feel and taste and touch, so you were there again.

Got to stop doing that. It's over, goddamn it, and you're alive.

The daytime memories weren't as bad as the dreams, but they were a
lot more embarrassing; nobody was around at midnight to hear him
screaming.

He opened the screen door with two fingers, kept it open with his elbow
as he got his foot up on the doorsill, and let it bang behind him as he went
into the kitchen, tossed the mail on the table and put the milk in the
Frigidaire, taking out some cold fried chicken left over from last night and
a couple of big juicy tomatoes. One of the advantages of living in
California was that you could get fresh vegetables earlier than most places.
Rolfe's housekeeping was painstakingly neat, a legacy of VMI and an
inborn fastidiousness, but he didn't pretend to be able to cook beyond the
can-opener-and-campfire level.

You're only twenty-four, he thought, eating and reading the paper.
Your life isn't over; it just feels that way sometimes.
 The postwar world was going to hell in a handbasket, according to the
Chronicle. The Russians were cutting up ugly in Eastern Europe; half the
people between England and the Ukraine were starving or dying of typhus
or both; the Reds were making gains in China; the French were trying to
get Indochina back, and not having much luck; ditto the Dutch in Java;
the Brits were having problems with the Jews in Palestine.

And MacArthur was lording it over the Nips, who were evidently
worshiping him like a god or their own emperor. Which meant that
Dugout Doug was finally getting what he thought he deserved.

He's almost as good a general as he thinks he is, Rolfe thought with a
smile. Which means he's pretty damned good. We may need him again,
someday. Vanity's a small price to pay, and I don't believe in an end to
wars.

And closer to home, John Lewis was talking about taking the coal
miners out on strike again. Rolfe ground his teeth slightly in fury. He was
a Democrat, of courseтАФit was virtually hereditary; where he was born they
hadn't forgotten whose idea Reconstruction was or who went around
waving the Bloody Shirt afterward, butтАж

But I'd have had Lewis taken out and shot for striking during the war,
he thought, and tossed the folded newspaper aside, standing and
stretching cautiously.

The leg made it difficult to sit comfortably when it stiffened up, and it
reminded him each time that he was less than he'd been before the
wound. He was naturally an active man, a little above average height and
built like a greyhound, slim but deep-chested and lithe, with