"Joan D. Vinge - Snow Queen 2 - World's End" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vinge Joan D)

I looked through the gateway, feeling as if someone

were watching me. But the shuttered whiteness of the

street was empty; the buildings lay dazed in the insufferable

humidity of the early afternoon. I stood there

awhile longer, feeling the sweat crawl down my chest

beneath the coarse cloth of my loose blue tunic; suddenly

I longed for the security of a uniform. My head

began to throb with the silent rhythm of the heat... and



JOAN D. VINGE




all at once the whiteness of the street seemed to shimmer

and re-form as endless fields of snow. A mirage, a hallucination
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--I've seen it a hundred times. You'd think a

sane man would be able to put it out of his mind, after

so long. ... I hunched my shoulders, feeling a chill as I

went on through the gate.



The first thing I did in the town was buy a sun helmet

and a drink of cold water--they don't give away anything

here, not even water. This is the Company's town,

as the shopkeeper informed me, not a resort. The conglomerate

that controls World's End is known as Universal