"Charles Ingrid - The Sand Wars 06 - Challenge Met" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ingrid Charles)

damp with the effort of breaking into the Walker complex without alerting
either Thrakian guards or Walker staff. As the coolness of the empty rooms
swept over him and he looked around he thought that he had never, in his
recollection, had a place to call his own. As long as he could think back, he'd
been housed in temporary places or barracks.

Amber sat gracefully on the redwood burl coffee table that had been one
of Colin's favorite possessions. The three of them had held many a
conference over it. "I've never been in the meditation chamber," she said.

"Ummm." Jack walked around the main room, eyeing artwork and office
work, noting the clean yet not too orderly status of both, as if the occupant
had just stepped out for a moment and would be back any second. "He
planned on coming back," he said.

"I can tell." She rubbed her forearms. "Or he didn't have time to prepare."

Jack paused at the archway to the meditation chamber where a small
flight of stairs led up. He looked over his shoulder. "Coming?"

"N-no. I don't think so."

He gave her a quick smile. "All right." He mounted the stairs and
disappeared from her sight.

Events in her life since she'd met Jack had all but purged her of her
psychic abilities—either purged her or walled them away so well she need
never worry about them again—save for moments now and then when they
prickled at her like St. Elmo's fire, an invisible dancer upon her nerves.

She chafed at her forearms now, as though trying to touch tattoos a
shaman had once etched on her, gone now but not forgotten. She could feel
the pull of Jack's presence on her like the tug of a golden rope.

Amber shifted her weight uneasily and looked about the room. She could
sense Colin's presence as if it were a perfume lingering. Unconsciously, she
took a deep breath, savoring it.



The meditation chamber stood half open, as if waiting for him. Jack
hesitated before entering, taking a quick and practiced glance about, an
action drilled into him by association with surveillance-shy Amber. He saw
nothing overt, ducked his head and stepped over the threshold.

The chamber had been left set on display, for the moment he broached
the field, gentle holo images came on, and he was surrounded by the worlds
that man had touched since his intrusion into space. Jack never made it to
the low, carved chaise longue of wood in the chamber's center where one
might sit or lie down. Imprisoned by the orbit of worlds he had known, he