"Joe Haldeman - The Coming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

you could keep up with traffic on foot without overexerting yourself.
The limo moved smoothly in a diagonal from the curb, between two cars and into the left lane.
Headed for the ghetto, interesting. Bobby the Bad was okay but a little dumb. Solo was new; friend of a
friend in Tampa. He acted a little too tough. Willy Joe would love to get something on him. Someday he
might need a little lesson in who's boss.
"Nick." He held up the empty wineglass. "Another retsina. You got the sports page?"
"Get you one." He brought the bottle over and then put a buck in the paper machine.
Willy Joe snatched the sports section. "See if I got any money left." He took a leatherbound
notebook from an inside pocket and checked his bets against the columns of results: Thoroughbreds at
Hialeah, dogs at Tampa, jai alai in town. He knew from last night's news that he'd lost his biggest wager:
convicted murderer Sally Anne Busby chose the wrong door and was electrocuted. The bitch. He'd
played a hunch and put a thousand on lethal injection.
Won a dog trifecta, though. All told, he was down $378. So he'd bet double that today. He spent
twenty minutes drawing up a list distributing the $756 among safe bets and long shots, and then called his
bookie.
The cube had some black broad talking to the professor's wife. "Did you ever expect this sort of
thing to happen?" she asked. "Is there any precedent?"
"Nick, you wanna put somethin' else on the cube? Enough about the fuckin' president."

Marya Washington
"Nothing I'd call a precedent," Professor Bell said. "As you certainly know, there have been
ambiguous SETI results—"
"Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence," Marya supplied for her audience.
"Yes ... that may come from other intelligent species, or they may be radio signals generated by
some natural process we don't completely understand."
"Like intelligence," Marya said.
"Quite so." She smiled broadly at the younger woman. "But in more than twenty years of analysis,
we haven't gotten any clear semantic content from the three suspect sources. This one is as plain as a slap
in the face."
"And as aggressive?" She held up two fingers in front of her chest, out of sight of the camera.
"That's not clear. If they were attacking us, why announce that they were on their way? Why not just
sneak up?"
"On the other hand," Marya said, "if their intent is benevolent, why don't they say more than 'ready
or not, here we come'?" One finger.
"Well, they have three months to go. This first signal might just have been to get our attention."
"They certainly have done that. Thank you so much, Dr. Bell, for taking time here at the University
of Florida to explain this interesting new development to our audience at home; this is Marya Washington
reporting live from Gainesville, Florida; we now return you to your local stations." She smiled into the
large camera until it clicked twice. Then she leaned back in the chair and yawned hugely.
"Caramba. I guess astronomers always discover things at ungodly hours."
"Used to be. It's around the clock now."
"I suppose. Well ... thanks, Aurora—can I call you Aurora?"
"Rory."
"Thanks for your patience. I wish we'd had more time, but we're competing with some big hard
news." She laughed. "As if a police station being blown up was anything compared to this."
"Oh, my. Was anyone hurt?"
"Eleven dead they know of. It was leveled."
"Funny I didn't hear the explosion."
"Oh, no, no. It was up in Detroit. It may not have been directed at the police, either. They were
holding some Mafia guy who was going to sing to the grand jury on Monday ... You didn't know about