"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Endgame (english)" - читать интересную книгу автораwatching the outer perimeter. After three hours of
recon, I was starting to regret being so nice and burning Rumplestiltskin's mortal coil, setting free his soul. "If that bastard lied to meЧ" "You'll what?" came Arlene's radio voice in my ear. "Resurrect him and kill him again?" "Maybe we should resurrect the Freds on the ship. Whoops, don't correct me; I just figured out how stupid that suggestion was." I managed to catch her while she was inhaling, or else she would have quickly snorted that the Freds on the ship knew even less about the Newbies than weЧwe had already killed them before we left for Fredworld, a hundred and sixty years before the Newbies landed! The weirdness of the place was starting to get to me. I kept seeing ghosts in my peripheral vision, but there was nothing when I whipped around with the motion detector. "Damn that Rumplestiltskin! He swore they were still here!" "Maybe he just meant they were here when he died?" I paused a long time. "Arlene, if that's all he meant, then we're in deep, deep trouble. I don't think you realize how deep." "I don't get you. If we can't find them, we jump say it, but I knew she was thinking to a dead, loveless Earth with no Albert Gallatin. "A.S., if we don't find the Newbies, I can almost guarantee they're going to find us. They'll find Earth. We were almost wiped out by the Freds. We barely hung on, and only because we evolved so much faster than they, we were so much more flexibleЧbecause they underestimated us! What the hell do you think would happen to humanity if the Newbies found us next?" "Jesus. I didn't thinkЧ" "And if they can go from stone plows and oxen toЧto this in just two hundred years, where are they going to be just ten years from now? What if they don't find us for fifty years, or a hundred years? Jesus and Mary, Arlene; they would be gods." She was silent; I heard only my own breath. I almost considered asking her to switch to hot-mike, so I could hear her breathing as well, but I couldn't afford to lose control now, not when I had troops depending on me. Above all else, I had to demon- strate competence and confidence. "Fly," she said at last, "I don't like this. I'm getting scared." She wrapped her arms around her chest and |
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