"Steven Gould - Jumper 02 - Reflex" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

He'd built it shortly before the NSA first discovered him, and Davy and Millie were the only
humans who'd ever been there. The surrounding terrain was incredibly rugged, a tortuous rocky
desert region known as El Solitario. Since Davy's original discovery of the place, it had become
more popular. The original ranch surrounding the area had been bought by Texas and made a state
park. Still, the house was built into a natural overhung cliff ledge two hundred feet from the canyon
bottom and a hundred feet from its top. Backpackers had made it into the bottom of the canyon, but
since the Aerie was on the side of El Solitario away from the trailhead, there were fifteen miles of
waterless mountain desert to be crossed just to get to the bottom of the canyon.

She groped for her glasses, got up, and put the kettle on the propane burner. While it heated,
she started a piñon fire in the woodstove, then browsed the shelves for a book. Davy had covered the
walls in the first five years and then added freestanding double-sided shelves later. In the last two
years, though, he'd finally started culling the shelves, donating books to community libraries, but his
acquisition rate still exceeded his outgoing and there were piles of new books throughout the dwelling.

It was three in the morning when she awoke in the reading nook, a cold pot of tea beside her
and The Wood Wife fallen from her lap, she gave up and went to bed.

Dammit, Davy! You must really be pissed.

When her alarm went off, at six-thirty, he still wasn't there.

Shit! She couldn't even cancel her clients, a husband and wife coming in for marital counseling.
There was no phone—only a last-ditch 406 MHz PLB—a satellite-detected personnel locator
beacon used by aircraft and ships for emergency search and rescue. It used the Global Positioning
System to send its location so setting it off would put some sort of helicopter on the ridge above the
Aerie fairly quickly.

She and Davy had considered a satellite cell phone for the Aerie but Davy was convinced the
NSA could use it to locate the cliff house. Instead, he carried a satellite pager, so Cox could get
messages to him all over the world, but it was receive only.

The Emergency PLB was just that, for emergencies. Was this one? Not yet, she decided.

He could get to the Aerie right up to seven-thirty and still jump her to the clinic on time, but her
professional clothes were all in the Stillwater condo. She wasn't even sure she had clothes here.

She ended up putting on one of Davy's flannel shirts and a pair of his jeans, which were tight in
the crotch and thighs, and loose in the waist. She found a pair of her own running shoes and used
Davy's socks.

For a while she stared at the picture on the bedside table, a Polaroid of both of them taken at a
restaurant in Tahiti. She remembered Davy's irritation at the flash. He hadn't hesitated to buy it from
the photographer. He didn't like images of himself floating around. He was going to destroy it but
Millie asked him to give it to her instead. Only her promise that she would keep it in the Aerie had
won him over.

There wasn't much in the propane refrigerator. She ate some Wheaties dry and drank two
glasses of water. The ceramic water tank atop the refrigerator was only a quarter full when she
checked the sight glass.