"Linda Evans - Sleipnir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Linda)

dogs. By the time I'd bargained my way to a final sale on the Mauser K-98-k bayonet I'd chosen, I was
sweating into my uniform, and was convinced that Frau Brunner was a throwback to the original Viking
traders she was descended from. She might have been closer to eighty than seventy, and was homely as
a bald crow—but the lady wassharp .
Which made the compliment Gary paid me when we walked out the door even sweeter.
"Pretty good, RB." He grinned. "Most of the officers on base warn guys away from her; but you
got a good price on that. Nice blade, too." Then his grin turned nasty. "Too bad you can't bargain like
that when it really counts. If you could talk like that to the brass, you wouldn't get yourself in half the
jams you end up in. And you might just get yourselfout of the other half."
I grunted and didn't deign to respond.
He chuckled. "Cat's got your tongue, eh? Well, you did a good job, anyway. Sometimes Frau
Brunner reminds me a little of my grandma. She used to make me bargain for cookies when I was a kid.
Nobody ever got anything over on her. You'd love her."
"I'd like to meet her," I said, thinking about the lonely old woman who'd cried over the letter Gary'd
shown me. "Think you could talk her into visiting you over here?"
Gary shrugged. "Don't know. She's kind of funny about traveling. Says the men in the family have
done enough traveling for several lifetimes. She's got a point, I guess, considering the odd corners of the
world we've been sent to fight in. Grandpa, Dad, and now me. She never figured on a bunch of
ragheads shooting at me over here. Poor Grandma." Gary shook his head; then got an evil glint in his
eye. "One of these fine nights, you know, those bastards are going to overrun the site, and leave brass
holding a bunch of bodies in the bag. Ought to be some fight, huh?"
I regarded Vernon with a jaundiced eye. Gary—and his dad, and his granddad—had been raised
with this pagan thing about fighting for glory because that's what life was for. Both his father and
grandfather had been decorated in their respective generations' wars before they died together,
pointlessly, in a car wreck. I guess Gary was just intent on continuing the family tradition.
I admired Gary's heroic attitude; but it was going to get him killed, and then where would he be?
Pact with Odin notwithstanding, sometimes Vernon had carried this Viking stuff a little too far. You did a
whole lot more damage to the enemy if you shot twenty or so with a sniper than if you took out half a
dozen in a suicide dash—and you generally didn't lose the sniper, either. Patton had had the right of it as
far as I was concerned—make the other poor, dumb son-of-a-bitch die for his country.
"You know, Gary," I said as we headed for the railway station, "I figured out why there aren't any
more Berserkers. They killed themselves off before they could reproduce. What was it Niven and
Pournelle said? `Evolution in action'?"
He gave me an enigmatic look from under his eyebrows. "Never thought of it quite that way," he
said quietly. "Maybe that's why Grandma asked me to quit Special Forces." His voice trailed off quietly
and I winced; I hadn't meant to rake up bad memories. He'd once admitted—somewhat shamefacedly—
that he couldn't say no to anything his grandmother asked, because he was all the old lady had left to live
for.
Our train ride was short, and soon we were back at the little village near the missile site, headed
into the surrounding forest. Within minutes, streets and houses were out of sight. It was hard to believe,
sometimes, that you couldn't get farther than a couple of kilometers from civilization anywhere in
Germany. The forests were so dark and forbidding, you could almost convince yourself you were living
a thousand years in the past—then a group of school kids would come trooping by, waving and shouting
and playing radios or something. . . .
"Uh, Gary?" I was careful to keep my voice low-pitched. That wasn't reverence for the forest; just
ingrained caution and leftover paranoia. One couldn't always count on hedgehogs. I hadn't told Gary any
details about my oath, and hadn't planned to—but the towering silence of the trees left me looking over
my shoulder for . . . something. I didn't know quite what. Abruptly I wanted to share my thoughts.
"Yeah?" He glanced back.
"Anything strike you as, well, strange about that hedgehog the other night?"