"Wilson-ToTheVectorBelong" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Robin)

a native, and then whacko! you drop naked as jay bird on the busiest dock in
Oakland at damn near high noon with half of Northern California looking on?"

"I don't know, Jake. I'm just damn glad I made it and didn't -- uh -abort," said
Al. "That's what happened to the last two guys. Got down and out and got to
severance when the mother told them the time, but then they couldn't get the --
uh-- shell open fast enough to save their aaa and she had to withdraw them . . .
. "

"The mother?" said Lindstrom.

"Yeah. How we, how I got here. The mother--" He broke off, at a loss for a
description of the indescribable. "Uh -- I guess, think of an ovipositor on a,
like a bug, only it works across space, I guess, and--uh -- sort a time."

Lindstrom has only a dim grasp of the concept. Someone on the other end of the
wire would dig up. an expert.

Aware of their listeners, he drains his glass and says: "And so here you are.
Just for the record, let me ask one more time why you're here. Who are you and
what's your mission, Al?"

Al shrugs. "Shit, Jake. I'd tell you if I could. I got this memory goes back
maybe eight, ten hours, and then except for training and the academy it's zeppo.
I guess I know I've been this" -- he points a thumb at his chest -- "only since
the time at the academy, but I don't remember anyone else I've been."

Jake nods and does not bother to correct "zeppo." He is not going to learn what
he is now convinced Al doesn't know. "My people are going to get antsy if we
don't show pretty soon," he says. "Any little thing would help." He half refills
each glass, emptying the square bottle. "Little things can mean a lot,"

Al sips and prints three circles interlocking. "Yeah, I know that one. And
little things come in big packages and how little we know and little old New
York and O little town of Bethlehem and --"

"Al." Lindstrom cuts him off quietly.

"Okay. But can you imagine what it's like? All those -- uh -- I guess years in
the academy? Getting your own language and culture and biography wiped and
practice, practice with new stuff? Getting the littlest finger on each hand cut
off just because polydactylism has only a five decimal point occurrence on this
planet? Go through all that shit and then blow the whole thing because of some
last minute glitch in the process? Can you imagine what it must have been like
for the two guys who didn't make it? All that loneliness for nothing? Can you
see why I feel so great to make it okay into this system?"

"I been wondering about that," says Lindstrom, actually wondering why a man in
custody in a bar ringed with enough firepower to subdue the Malay Peninsula
would consider himself to have been successful in his mission, whatever in the