"2 The Alien Within" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

"Your daughter, Eleanor," Richards went on, "will be thirty in a few weeks. She's married to a Peace Enforcer named Thompson; they make their home in Christchurch, New Zealand. They have two children, also. A girl and a boy."

"I'm a grandfather."

"Four times over." Richards smiled.

A grandfather, but a lousy father, Stoner told himself.

Richards's smile faded. Slowly, he said, "Your ex-wife died several years ago. A highway accident."

The pain surprised Stoner. He had expected to feel nothing. The open wound that their divorce had ripped out of his soul had been numbed long ago, covered with emotional scar tissue as thick as a spacecraft's heat shield. Or so Stoner had thought. Yet the news of Doris's death cut right through and stabbed deep into his flesh.

"Are you all right?" Richards asked.

Stoner turned away from his inquisitive face and looked through the window, out at the sun-sparkling sea.

"It's a lot to take in, all at once," he replied to the psychiatrist.

"Yes," Richards said. "We'll take it as slow as you like."

Stoner turned back toward him. The man was trying to keep his emotions to himself, but Stoner could see past his eyes, past the slightly quizzical smile that was supposed to be reassuring. I'm a laboratory specimen to him; an intriguing patient, the subject of a paper he'll deliver at an international conference of psychiatrists.

He looked deeper and realized that there was more to it. Richards truly wanted to help Stoner. The desire to be helpful was real, even if it was underlain by the desire to further his own career. And even deeper than that, buried so deeply that Richards himself barely knew of its existence, was the drive to learn, to know, to understand. Stoner smiled at the psychiatrist. He recognized that drive, that urgent passion. He himself had been a slave to it in his earlier life.

Richards misinterpreted his smile. "You feel better?"

"Yes," Stoner said. "I feel better."

The psychiatrist got to his feet. "I think that's enough information for you to digest for the time being."

"How long will I be here?"

Richards shrugged. "They'll want to run tests. . . ."

Stoner pulled himself up from his chair. He towered over the psychiatrist. "How long?"

"I really don't know."

"Days? Weeks? Months?"

Richards put on his brightest smile. "I truly can't say. Weeks, at least. Probably a couple of months." He started for the spot on the wall where the portal had opened.

Stoner asked, "Can I at least get out of this room and walk around the place?"

"Oh, sure," Richards said over his shoulder. "In a day or so."

"They're going to guard me pretty closely, aren't they?"

The wall glowed and the portal in it opened. "You're a very important person," Richards said. "The first man to be revived after cryonic suspension. You'll be famous."