"Timothy Zahn - The Green and the Gray" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

He grunted. "I took the subway up to 103rd at lunchtime and walked back along last night's route," he
told her. "I couldn't get into the alleyтАФthe gate was lockedтАФbut I couldn't see an single thing that
looked out of the ordinary."
Caroline selected a knife and started cutting slices of cheese. "It's like it never happened."
"Pretty much," Roger agreed. "I did hear one interesting tidbit, though. Seems there was a massive
power outage up in Morningside Heights last night. The west part, over by Riverside Park."
Caroline frowned. "How far up?"

"Kelly said everything around his place on West 115th was completely dark." He paused. "Or at least
it was after the big flash."
"Flash?"
"Yeah," Roger said. "Like all the streetlights blew at once, he said."
"Did ConEd have any explanation?"
"Just the usual bafflegab," Roger said. "Overloads, cable stress, squirrels in the wiring, or maybe the
Broadway construction."
"You think that might have had something to do with our streetlight problem?" Caroline asked.
"I'd like to," Roger said. "But there are three problems. One, it doesn't sound anything like what we
ran into, so I don't know how they could be related. Two, the Morningside outage happened nearly
an hour before our lights did their magic trick. And three, there's still the problem of why the
streetlights went out and not the power in the buildings themselves."
Caroline grimaced. "So we're back where we started," she said. "We've got a wild story without a
single bit of proof. Except the gun," she corrected herself. "What did you do with it?"
"I put it in the junk drawer last night," he said. "Underneath your latch-hook stuff."
The latch-hook stuff she hadn't done anything with in years, she recalled, a brief flush of warmth
rising into her cheeks. She should either pick up the hobby again or get rid of the trappings. "It's like
one of those old ghost stories we used to tell around the campfire," she said. "You ever do that?"
"Nope," Roger said. "And if she was a ghost, she was a damn heavy one."



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The Green and the Gray

"Oh, they can be substantial enough," Caroline assured him. "I remember one story about a high-
school guy who picked up a girl at a dance and lent her his sweater on the way home."
"CarolineтАФ"
"Anyway," she said, ignoring the interruption, "the next day when he went to the house he'd dropped
her off atтАФ"
"Caroline!"
She broke off, startled at the harshness in his voice, shrinking automatically into herself. What had
she done now?
Roger was staring into space, the muscles in his throat gone suddenly rigid. "Listen," he said softly.
She frowned, holding her breath and straining her ears.
And there it was. A quiet tapping sound coming from the direction of the living room.
The kind of sound made by knuckles rapping on glass.
"I think," Roger said, his voice sounding unnaturally casual, "we've got company."
He headed for the living room. Caroline looked for a moment at the knife in her hand, then set it
down beside the block of cheese and followed.
She found Roger standing just inside the living room, gazing across at the balcony door. There,