"Rajnar Vajra - Afterburn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vajra Rajnar)

The left hand is the worst -- red, black, white, and shriveled -- adorned with
shiny yellow, unnatural growths.
But I am too afraid for my life to worry for long about anything else.
Enemies can come from anywhere, and from any direction including from beneath
and, in one horrid instance, from within.
****
Sue Williams and Carla Carroll
"I've seen something like this before," Sue remarked in a voice more
suitable for a library or a funeral.
A thin line appeared between Carla's gray eyebrows. "I'd assume so."




Page 1
 Sue flushed. The hardest thing about transferring to a new hospital was
the way even her fellow physicians would take one look at her and commence the
usual assumptions. "I'm not talking about _aquariums_, Doctor. I've seen tanks
much like this intended for people."
The pale eyebrows compressed then sprang up. "You have? Where?"
"In movies. On -- " Sue grimaced slightly " -- on TV. It's a
surprisingly common theme. Maybe that's what gave him the idea."
The older woman tried to brush her annoyance aside. Newcomers always
had idiosyncratic reactions to Unit Seventeen and the leaking subsonics didn't
help. "Well, this one is real. And so far, I daresay, unique."
"You mean there aren't sixteen others?"
Carla stared at her trainee for a moment, surprised. The question was
clearly intended as a joke. Unit Seventeen had been named as such because
basement-room seventeen was the only large space that the hospital could make
available for the experiment. Until this moment, the younger woman had seemed
too stiff to appreciate jokes let alone crack one.
Sue placed a finger tentatively against the warm tank. "Such thick
glass! And with all that liquid, I'd think the system must be incredibly
heavy."
"Actually, your 'glass' is plastic. But you're right. Neoperflubron,
even with softening agents and scar inhibitors added, weighs almost twice as
much as water liter for liter. Unit Seventeen, including all its ... contents,
weighs over four tons."
Susan braced herself to look past the ghostly reflections of the room's
many ready lights and stare again into the heart of the tank, but her eyes
kept sliding away. She mumbled something very quietly.
"What that?" Carla asked.
Susan was embarrassed to realize she'd spoken aloud. "Sorry. I was just
thinking that the _Chronicle_ once called him 'the most eligible bachelor in
San Francisco.'"
****
Paul
I see what is undoubtedly my next destination, a narrow island that
bifurcates the river perhaps a half mile ahead. A very tall structure looms on
that island. It could be a castle or a bizarre skyscraper, or something new