"James Tiptree Jr. - Yanqui Doodle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

under the iron boots of the Gu├йvaristas. He catches her curious eyes on him and grins broadly, saying
"Libertad!"
 "Si! Si!" Her face lights up with a toothy grin. Life is good; only that morning she had sold her
twelve-year-old daughter to three Yanquis for pesos four hundred, about twenty dollars.

Senator Biller steels himself against the impulse to tell his driver to help her with her load. (They're
used to it, this is the way they live.) He turns to his snapshots of the town below.

Ahead, the cattle are dispersing. The party is getting back into their cars. On the side road the bus
has started up, too.

"SeeтАФHospital!" the driver throws back over his shoulder, waving at a large building set in a garden
just in view several kilometers ahead and below.



In that same hospital, Pfc. Donald Still had come back to life some two weeks before. The last thing
he remembered was hearing his patrol leader yell and finding himself falling with an unbelievable pain on
the inside of his thigh. He also remembered thinking that the path behind the ridge they were following
was a natural site for mines, but he was too exhilarated to object. They were in hot pursuit of a bunch of
Gu├йs who were running and dodging just behind the spine of the ridge. The trees cleared out ahead. Don
popped another BZ, looking forward to getting himself some good bursts.

Now he was flat on his back, feeling terrible, with a heavy wrapped-up leg. Steel rails on the bed.
Above him afternoon sun filtered through ornate windows in a high dome. Mostly silence all around, no
shots, no footsteps running. This was no battle-aid station. The choppers must have carried them all the
way back to wherever this was. He felt that a lot of time had passed here: dreams of struggles, dreams of
himself shouting.

His mouth and eyes were painfully dry, his head hurt, he felt weak and fluttery inside, and his leg
ached horribly. Automatically he reached for a Maintenance pill. But his pill kit wasn't there. He was in
hospital pjs, no pockets, no pills, nada.

"Hey! Hello!"

A dizzyingly beautiful girl's face swam in front of him. No, on second look she wasn't so gorgeous,
only cute and very clean.

"Where am I? What's with my leg?"

She produced a clipboard. "You're in San Izquierda Intermediate Rehab Fifteen. Your leg is okay,
you'll be walking tomorrow when the cast comes off. You were lucky, you just lost a lot of blood." She
smiled meaningfully. "Very lucky."

"I need an M."

"Oh-oh." She frowned. "Wel-1-1. Tomorrow you start detox."

"But this is still today!" He tried to smile over sudden panic.