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

short-cropped hair the color of new bronze and leaf-green eyes in a
narrow, straight-nosed face.

It was a fine April day, Bay Area style; that meant a bit chilly, with a
cool ocean breeze out of the northwest coming in through the kitchen
windows. The noontime haze over the bay was gone, and there were
probably whitecaps out there on itтАФno ocean view here, of course, or the
place would have been too expensive for him. A few planes were overhead
from the naval air station farther north, adding the drone of their engines
to a subdued hum of traffic, a ship's horn, the distant clang of electric
trolley cars. Rolfe finished his sparse meal, washed the dishes and
doggedly went through another of the exquisitely painful series of
exercises the doctors said would help the damaged muscles and tendons
heal. That done, he felt he deserved some fun.

The basement was clean and tidy now, big and dim, smelling of the
cement mortar he'd used to patch cracks, and mostly empty except for
tubs, scrub board and mangle. Or it had been until the shortwave set
arrived; it was war surplus, of course, and he'd gotten it cheap through
friends. He'd also fiddled with the insides a good deal, and he flattered
himself he'd made some improvementsтАФcertainly he'd improved the
reception, even if he'd nearly killed himself rigging the antenna on the
roof, Engineering and math had been his best subjects at VMI, and he'd
been thinking about using this G.I. Bill to get into one of the California
universitiesтАФyou could do that and convalesce at the same time. A field
officer had to be able to sprint, but there were types of civilian engineer
who didn't, and with luck he could still avoid being stuck behind a desk all
the time.

One thing engineers didn't have to be either was poor. Genteel rural
poverty was something he knew far too well from his Tidewater childhood
to court willingly.

His fingers moved confidently over the exposed tubes and circuits as he
thought. With a grunt of satisfaction he made the final connection, flipped
the power switch and sat back to let the tubes warm upтАФ

CRACK!

The sound was earsplitting, louder than thunder, accompanied by a
dazzling flash. John Rolfe threw himself out of the chair with
long-conditioned reflex, hitting the dirt and blinking the dazzle out of his
eyes desperately, because if you couldn't see then you didn't get to go on
breathingтАж

It took a couple of extra blinks before he realized that he was really
seeing what his eyes were showing him. The far wall of the basementтАФthe
long side to the right of his shortwave setтАФwasтАж gone. Instead of a
mortared fieldstone wall half-covered in rawly new pine-plank shelving,
there was a sheet of something silvery, something that rippled very