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

Glancing around the bare room, Stoner asked, "Can you get me something to read? I've got eighteen years of news to catch up on."

The psychiatrist hesitated a moment. "Okay," he said. "I'll see that you get some reading material. But probably

you ought to go slowly--there's a certain amount of cultural shock that you're going to have to deal with."

"Cultural shock?"

"The world's changed a lot in the past eighteen years."

"That's what I want to find out about."

"In due time. For the first few days, I think we ought to confine your reading to entertainment, rather than current events."

A sudden question popped into Stoner's mind. "Markov," he blurted. "Kirill Markov, the Russian linguist I worked with. How is he?"

Richards made a small shrug. "As far as I know, he's fine. Living in Moscow again. I believe he sent a message asking about you recently."

He stepped through and the wall became solid again. Stoner stood in the middle of the room, thinking that the first use of the alien's technology had been to make a jail cell for him.











CHAPTER 4






Jo Camerata did not sit at the head of the conference table. Vanguard Industries had long ago dispensed with such archaic hierarchical formalities. The president of the corporation sat at the middle of the table, flanked on either side by members of the board of directors, most of them male. A dozen muttered conversations buzzed around the table as Jo took her seat. Directly across from her sat the chairman of the hoard, Everett Nillson, her husband.

Nillson was a tall, rawboned Swede whose thinning blond hair and bushy eyebrows had been bleached nearly white by the Hawaiian sun. His eyes were such a pale blue that they seemed nearly colorless. His skin was so fair that strangers often assumed he was an albino. He was slow in speech and in movements, which led many an unwary adversary into believing Nillson's mind worked slowly, too. It did not.

He smiled across the polished mahogany table at his wife, his prized ornament, knowing that he had won her away from several of the other men seated in this plush, paneled boardroom. He had a long, bony, unhandsome face and a smile that looked more pained than pleasured. His hands were big, powerful, with lumpy, irregular knuckles and long, thick fingers. If it weren't for the perfectly fitted gray summer-weight suit and opulently decorated silk shirt he wore, he could easily have been mistaken for a farmer or a merchant seaman.

Jo smiled back at him, as much to discomfit some of the men seated around the table as to please her husband. She had dressed herself for this meeting in a demure starched white blouse with a high collar and a navy-blue knee-length skirt. Her only jewelry was a choker of black pearls, a diamond-studded pin shaped in Vanguard Industries' stylized V, and the plain platinum wedding band that Nillson had given her.

As chairman of the board, Nillson called the meeting to order. The room fell silent.

He let the silence hang for a long moment. All eyes were focused on him. Pungent smoke from several cigars and a half-dozen cigarettes wafted up to the ceiling vents. Nillson fixed his gaze on the computer screen set into the table top before him.

Finally, in his surprisingly deep, rich baritone he said, "The first item on our agenda this morning is a report on the cryonic project." He looked up at his wife. "Darling, if you will be so kind."