"John Dalmas - The Three-Cornered War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

Romlar grinned. "I'm your man. It sounds interesting."
"Good. To start with, you'll work right here. Your office will be two floors down."
Romlar put a hand on Lotta's arm. "Does Lotta have a role in this?"
Kristal laughed. "She'll take you to lunch and answer your questions. Meanwhile, I
have a great deal to do here." His gesture took in not only his desk and monitor, but the
whole building. "We'll talk again, very soon."
Lotta took Romlar to the second floor, to a dining room whose transparent inner walls
bordered the Rotunda. There they took a table near a cluster of flowering fern trees,
their fronds soft green through the glass. A waiter brought menus, took their drink
orders and left.
"An impressive place," Romlar said. "What hat do you wear here?"
"I'm Emry's principal psychic resource, and the head of his Remote Spying Section."
"How about getting married then? Take an apartment and be together for a change."
"I'm afraid I can't take an apartment with you."
His eyebrows raised. "Why not?"
She laughed. "Because Emry's assigned me a guest house on the hill. As free from
psychic disturbance as you can get, this near the capital. I'm one of a kind, he tells me.
To be more exact, he said: 'Lotta, you're like Artus. You're one of a kind.' " Her smile
softened. "There's lots of room, if you'd like to share it with me. Our schedules won't
always match, but we'll be together a lot more than once every few years."
Romlar chuckled. "I love you, Lotta. Very much. I suppose I've mentioned that before."
"I seem to recall something like that. In the dim past." She grinned. "Would you like to
see the house first? Before you commit yourself to anything as drastic as marriage?"
He laughed aloud, then leaned across the table and they kissed.
Chapter 2 Wedding
Artus Romlar's twelve-day leave was busy. Lord Kristal had had six days in mind for

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John Dalmas - The Three-Cornered War


him, but he'd gotten an extension in honor of his forthcoming marriage. He spent a day
in Landfall with Lotta, shopping for civilian clothes, then six days with his parents.
Having their son at home had been a strange experience for them. As a boy, he'd been
considered marginally retarded. Big, fat, and dumb, his schoolmates had put it. But
seldom to his face, because violent could easily have been added. Not that he'd been
truculent. Actually he'd been self-effacing, tried to go unnoticed. But when he was
angered, his big fists flew. It was that which, soon after his seventeenth birthday, had
taken him from public school to reformatory.
Now he stood in their living room, bigger than ever but hardbodied. And even to diem,
charismatic! At age twenty-six, he was by far the Confederation's most famous military
figure in centuries. Not in the army, but commanding the 1st Special Projects Regiment,
the glamorous White T'swa. Still a teenager, he'd led the defense of Terfreya. Then the
regiment's survivors had dropped out of sight for a few years, completing their training
on other worlds.
Seeing him again, his mother was almost unable to speak. Her love for him, her only
child, had been blunted only occasionally by his troubles at school. Despite her usual
meekness, she'd defended him as best she could, even against a father who had
problems of his own. A worrier who sometimes attacked his son with abusive mouth,
and less often with his hands, a troubled man who'd tried but too often failed. Whose