"Charles Stross - A Colder War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

unthinkable: but it's proving difficult. The new man in the White House is
straight-talking, demands straight answers. He's pious enough not to
believe in the supernatural, confident enough that just listening to one of
his speeches is an uplifting experience if you can close your eyes and
believe in morning in America. There is probably no way of explaining
Project Koschei, or XK-PLUTO, or MK-NIGHTMARE, or the gates,
without watering them down into just another weapons system -- which
they are not. Weapons may have deadly or hideous effects, but they
acquire moral character from the actions of those who use them. Whereas
these projects are indelibly stained by a patina of ancient evil ...

He hopes that if the balloon ever does go up, if the sirens wail, he and
Andrea and Jason will be left behind to face the nuclear fire. It'll be a
merciful death compared with what he suspect lurks out there, in the
unexplored vastness beyond the gates. The vastness that made Nixon
cancel the manned space program, leaving just the standing joke of a
white-elephant shuttle, when he realised just how hideously dangerous the
space race might become. The darkness that broke Jimmy Carter's faith
and turned Lyndon B. Johnson into an alcoholic.

He stands up, nervously shifts from one foot to the other. Looks round at
the walls of his cubicle. For a moment the cigarette smouldering on the
edge of his ash tray catches his attention: wisps of blue-grey smoke coil
like lazy dragons in the air above it, writhing in a strange cuneiform text.
He blinks and they're gone, and the skin in the small of his back prickles
as if someone had pissed on his grave.

"Shit.'' Finally, a spoken word in the silence. His hand is shaking as he
stubs the cigarette out. Mustn't let this get to me. He glances at the wall.
It's nineteen hundred hours; too late, too late. He should go home, Andy
will be worrying herself sick.

In the end it's all too much. He slides the thin folder into the safe behind
his chair, turns the locking handle and spins the dial, then signs himself
out of the reading room and goes through the usual exit search.

During the thirty mile drive home, he spits out of the window, trying to
rid his mouth of the taste of Auschwitz ashes.



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswi...ten/spaar/Charles%20Stross%20-%20A%20Colder%20War.htm (7 of 34)19-2-2006 17:13:54
A Colder War - a novelette by Charles Stross


Late Night in the White House

The colonel is febrile, jittering about the room with gung-ho enthusiasm.
"That was a mighty fine report you pulled together, Jourgensen!'' He
paces over to the niche between the office filing cabinet and the wall,