"Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

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FOREVER PEACE

BY

JOE HALDEMAN

Copyright © Joe Haldeman 1997

Version 1.0

1998 Hugo Award Winner
1999 Nebula Award Winner

This novel is for two editors: John W. Campbell, who rejected a story because he thought it was absurd
to write about American women who fight and die in combat, and Ben Bova, who didn't.

Caveat lector: This book is not a continuation of my 1975 novel The Forever War. From the author's
point of view it is a kind of sequel, though, examining some of that novel's problems from an angle that
didn't exist twenty years ago.




IT WAS NOT QUITE completely dark, thin blue moonlight threading down through the canopy of
leaves. And it was never completely quiet.

A thick twig popped, the noise muffled under a heavy mass. A male howler monkey came out of his
drowse and looked down. Something moved down there, black on black. He filled his lungs to challenge
it.

There was a sound like a piece of newspaper being torn. The monkey's midsection disappeared in a dark
spray of blood and shredded organs. The body fell heavily through the branches in two halves.

Would you lay off the goddamn monkeys? Shut up! This place is an ecological preserve. My watch, shut
up. Target practice.

Black on black it paused, then slipped through the jungle like a heavy silent reptile. A man could be
standing two yards away and not see it. In infrared it wasn't there. Radar would slither off its skin.

It smelled human flesh and stopped. The prey maybe thirty meters upwind, a male, rank with old sweat,
garlic on his breath. Smell of gun oil and smokeless powder residue. It tested the direction of the wind
and backtracked, circled around. The man would be watching the path. So come in from the woods.

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