"Chalker, Jack L - A Jungle Of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

"Roger, Grasshopper, we read you five-by. Go ahead with message."
"Scout map in enemy hands, one dead, heavy enemy concentration," Savage reported. "Impossible to make objective. Request exfiltration at original LZ."
"Affirmative, Grasshopper," responded the tinny voice. "Can you do it in eighteen?"
"Ah, roger, Artichoke, see you soon. Out."
"Artichoke out. Good luck."
The radio went dead. Everybody around it relaxed, even though the toughest part was yet to come.
"Satisfied?" Savage asked McNally, who nodded grimly. "Well, we have only eighteen minutes, so let's get over there. My feet are killing me."
Santori, the little man, took away the point and they started off toward the LZ. No one moved to help Savage or to give him back his weapons. They walked slowly, deliberately, in dead silence, eyes on what they could see of the trees and swamp, conscious that they must make no betraying sound, no matter how much they felt like running.
They didn't smell any nuoc-mam until they were on the edge of the LZ. The sky had lightened considerably and they could see the perimeters of the clearing. The smell was not very strong -- probably only one or two men left as a long-shot rear guard.
They waited in tense silence, trying to spot the unseen watchers.
The chopper was right on time, and touched down without incident. Nobody was kidding himself, though: the hidden eyes watching them would wait for them to treak into the clearing, then open up.
Santori made one of them, and gestured.
"Now!" McNally shouted and they all went fullspeed for the chopper. Santori fired just before he lept but was running too hard to see the man he hit fall from his tree perch. An AK-47 opened on them from the opposite side of the clearing almost simultaneously.
Savage was pushed ahead by McNally and ran for the open bay only meters away. As he did, he felt a sharp explosion in his back and went down almost as he reached the chopper door. Strong hands pushed him into the bay and he heard others jump in behind him. The chopper lifted off, bullets striking its sides.
"How many hit?" McNally called over the engine noise.
"Lost Sam and Harry," Santori yelled. "And him. No big loss, though. Bullheaded sonovabitch. Look at him lyin' there, like a big ape, bleedin' his guts out."
"Yeah," someone else put in. "Sorta like one of them cavemen or somethin'. Ugliest bastard I've ever seen."
The object of the comments lay facedown in an everwidening pool of blood. He felt like a ten-ton spider was on his back, all the legs having equal and monstrous weight. He couldn't move at all, not even groan.
"He ain't gonna make it," someone remarked, but the words were a million miles away. He couldn't think anymore, yet he felt as if his mind were perfectly clear. Shock dulled the pain to a mild discomfort, and something told him that he'd be dead before he would feel the full impact of the injury.
He didn't give a damn any longer.
He was conscious of someone bending over him, but he couldn't see who, nor did it seem to matter. Mentally and physically, he was totally paralyzed.
"Sorry, Savage," McNally's voice came softly from the fog in his ears, "but no way was I gonna let you throw any of us in the clink -- particularly me."
No one else heard the comment, and Savage could do nothing with it. For Savage there were no longer sounds, or sights, or feelings, nor even the acrid smell of the chopper. He was alone in his own private world.
The official records of the United States Army stat that Paul Carleton Savage, Second Lieutenant, USAR, died in action aboard a rescue helicopter as the result of hostile fire on or about 0430 on 29 July 1969.
The first time.


2


HE WAS NOT aware that he was dead. This, on the face of it, was normal, as it meant a complete absence of sensation and he had had no previous experience of that sort.
The terror on his back was gone, lifted slowly as vision had been blotted out; but this brought no surprise, no shock that it was gone. It had lifted slowly, accompanied by that slow fade of all sensation, like a candle being gradually extinguished by carbon dioxide.
There bad come a blankness, an absence of all colors, even black and white. He had had nothing to compare it to; such a concept could exist only in theory in the world he had left.
Bit by bit, he became aware of subtle differences, of tangibles in the void. As with the void itself, he had no frame of reference -- awareness that there were other things, perhaps (or maybe "others") all around him. But it was as if, having been struck totally blind, deaf, and dumb, vision was returning.
Yet he could "see" only in this new, undefinable way which, lacking words or frame of reference, he could only experience, not comprehend. What the shit is this? he thought angrily.
He remembered. He remembered the mission, the mutiny. He remembered that he had been murdered, not shot by an enemy.
Murdered? No, that couldn't be right. He was still-- Well, he was, still.
The horrible thought struck him that he was in a hospital somewhere, deaf, dumb, blind, insensitive to the world -- a living vegetable imprisoned in the wrecked shell of his body. It terrified him. He tried to shake, to move, to reach out, to prove it wasn't so.
Nothing happened. He had nothing to reach out with, or to.
He tried merely to lower his chin to his chest, to make certain that it was there -- and was terribly afraid that it was.
It wasn't. He had no head to move, no chest to touch.
Absorbed in these thoughts, he failed to notice that more and more "somethings" were filling in the void. And something else.
Now he noticed it.
Voices -- No, not quite. Thoughts -- like random thoughts collecting in his brain. Other people's thoughts.
Gradually it was becoming apparent to him that he was not alone at all -- that at least some of these other presences, perhaps a large number of them, were in fact other people. Some made no sense at all, but others radiated identifiable symbol connections. Many, most in fact, seemed to radiate the same panic that he bad undergone only moments -- hours? -- before. A few were calm, resigned, or even expectant. Many were hope lessly insane.
Babblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabble . . .
It rushed in at him like a living force, exploding inside his mind. He fought furiously for control, taken off guard by the sudden attack, but the sea of thoughts came on, like giant waves, each greater than the one before. He tried to concentrate, tried to chive them off, stem the tide. No matter what happened, he had to lock them out, keep them away!
I am Paul Carleton Savage, Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, serial number 214-44-1430AR. I am Paul Carleton Savage, Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, serial number--
BabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabblebabbleBABBLEBABBLEBABBLE
I am Paul Carleton Savage, Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, serial--