"Timothy Zahn - Cascade Point and Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

Timothy Zahn
CASCADE POINT

Contents
THE GIFTIE GIE US
THE DREAMSENDER
THE ENERGY CRISIS OF 2215
RETURN TO THE FOLD
THE SHADOWS OF EVENING
NOT ALWAYS TO THE STRONG
THE CHALLENGE
THE CASSANDRA
DRAGON PAX
JOB INACTION
TEAMWORK
THE FINAL REPORT ON THE LIFELINE EXPERIMENT
CASCADE POINT
Acknowledgments



The Giftie Gie Us
The sun was barely up as I left the cabin that morning, but it was already
promising to be a beautiful day. Some freak of nature had blown away the usual
cloud cover and was treating the worldтАФor at least the middle AppalachiansтАФto
an absolutely clear blue sky, the first I'd seen in months. I admired the sky and the
budding April greenery around me as I made my way down the wooded slope,
long practice enabling me to avoid trees and other obstructions with minimal
effort. It was finally spring, I decided, smiling my half-smile at the blazing sun
which was already starting to drive the chill from the morning air. Had it not been
for the oppressive silence in the forest, it would almost be possible to convince
myself that the Last War had been only a bad dream. But the absence of birds,
which for some reason had been particularly hard hit by the Soviet nuke bac
barrage, was a continual reminder to me. I had hoped that, by now, nearly five
years after the holocaust, they would have made a comeback. Clearly, they had
not, and I could only hope that enough had survived the missiles to eventually
repopulate the continent. Somehow, it seemed the height of injustice for birds to
die in a war over oil.

I had reached the weed-overgrown gravel road that lay southwest of my cabin
and had started to cross it when a bit of color caught my eye. About fifty yards
down the road, off to the side, was something that looked like a pile of old laundry.
But I knew better; no one threw away clothes these days. Almost undoubtedly it
was a body.
 I regarded it, feeling my jaw tightening. I'd looked at far too many bodies in
my lifetime, and my natural impulse was to continue across the road and forget
what I'd seen. But someone had to check this outтАФfind out whether it was a
stranger or someone local, find out whether it had been a natural death or
otherwiseтАФand that someone might just as well be me. Aside from anything else,
if there was a murderer running around loose, I wanted to know about it. I took a