"Richard Hatch - Battlestar Galactica 5 - Paradis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hatch Richard)

think they don't want me too close to new aliens. Not at first. Maybe they
like to hold me in reserve. We've been burned too many times in the past. I
don't trust strangers as much as I once did."

The bartender nodded. "I know what you mean."

Encouraged, Starbuck continued: "None of what I'm saying is
confidential which is why I can talk about it."
 The bartender had heard this sort of thing before. "I appreciate that,"
he said as he wiped the counter and kept his eye on a new socialator. She
was quite striking.

Starbuck followed the bartender's gaze and sized up the girl himself.
"She's nice. Her name's Morgana."

They watched her chatting up a well-to-do customer overflowing with
cubits.

Times had changed for Starbuck. Caught between his feelings for
Athena and Cassie, he hardly knew which way to turn. His love for Cassie
was deep but he didn't want to spoil things between her and Apollo.
Athena excited him more than any other woman in his life but he was
tired of responding to her constant demands. He suspected that she loved
him more than he loved her.

That's why grog was good. He finished his drink and thought about
how it had been in the good old days, when he when he would have taken a
woman like Morgana down to see a sunset on the new world… and stayed
for the sunrise.

"I'm looking forward to when I first step foot on Paradis," the bartender
volunteered. "I want to stand on solid ground and breathe the kind of air
they have down there."

"The air is sweet," agreed Starbuck from firsthand knowledge. "It's
sweet as a full glass of ambrosa, a green place, a pleasure."

The bartender was so impressed with Starbuck's poetry that he refilled
the glass without being asked. He didn't think to ask if there might be a
military threat on Paradis and Starbuck wouldn't answer if he knew. The
official position of the Council had not yet been stated but was expected
real soon now.

They were still getting acquainted with the planet and coming to grips
with the miracle that they have been saved again. Business as usual.

Suddenly the bartender became intoxicated on thoughts of his own
future. "I want to go down there," he said. "I want to be outside right
before a thunderstorm. I want to feel a change of pressure in my ears. I'll
smell the air and it will be different than what we breathe up here."