"Bc11" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry & Pournelle)

"All right-well, I hope they've got the skeeter sheltered."
"You know Justin. But I'll go make a check."
Linda kissed Joe, and he looked almost surprised. "I'm just going to Robor," he murmured against her lips.
"Do I need a reason these days?" she asked.
"Never." He kissed her again, and started off across the glade.
"Will you guys stop the mush?" Edgar said disgustedly.
"No respect," Linda clucked. "Remember-I'm going to be your mother one day soon."
"Hey. You know, one of a mother's duties is to find mates for her offspring."
"I told you what to do about that problem."
"Sure. I'll keep trying. Linda, Dad says it wasn't sabotage. You agree?"
"Yes."
"Say that again?"
"Yes! I agree it was not sabotage. Edgar, that wind is really howling now, it's getting hard to hear." She put her hand across her nose in a vain attempt to filter the dust. "It's as if the coal had little flecks of dynamite-" She stopped. Some creature was howling in torment.
"What's that?" Edgar shouted.
"I don't know-" Across the clearing, the dogs were leaping and biting-at the dust. Joe slapped at his chest and neck and face. At first she thought it some kind of joke . . . some kind of crazy dance.
The wind was stronger now, driving a wall of dust before it. She coughed and stepped out of the shelter, trying to see more clearly. Her smile was dead on her lips, her laughing questions stillborn in her throat. "Joe . . . " And then she screamed.
"Linda? Dad?" Edgar's voice sounded urgent. "Alert! All stations alert! Base Two is in trouble!"
She was blind before she quite realized that she was in trouble. Agony shrieked in her eye sockets, and she slapped her hands up to cover them. Blood slicked her palms, she felt the hollows where her eyes should have been, and the backs of her hands were being shredded.
The world was consumed with agony. The wind roared in her ears. She had time to scream "Joe!" and then the pain was at her lips, her 'tongue, and she was gagging on blood. Some mass staggered into her, and she knew it was Joe, darling Joe, loving Joe, groaning like a thing that had never known human consciousness. The dogs' barking had transformed into an endless, pain-racked howl.

In Camelot, bedroom alarms shrieked, and the streets were filled with sprinting bare feet. Hastily armed grendel guns pointed in all directions, and found nothing. There was no threat to be seen.
By now the image from Satellite 16 was being piped through Geographic, enhanced, and relayed to Camelot's communications center. The image was expanded again, and then again, until it seemed the scene was no more than a hundred yards distant . . . but it was all a blur, just textures shifting through fog.
Hendrick Sills was first into the center. "What's the alarm, Edgar?"
There was panic in Edgar's voice. "I thought it was a dust storm! They come through there regular, no problem, but the dogs started barking and Linda was screaming and now I can't hear anything, and I can't see anything, and my God!"
"Get hold of yourself," Zack said. "Dust storm. Rain?"
"No, no rain, it's a dry hot wind, sirocco wind. Stronger than they usually get, but-Zack, I can't hear anything. They were screaming, and now they don't answer! What do I do?"
"Keep watching. Can you zoom in?"
"Trying. There, the dust is thinning out-"
The image focused. Edgar's voice dropped to a whisper. "Oh, my God." Two human shapes and a dog shape were writhing on the ground. "Dad! Linda!"
The wind howled, and under the wind they could hear a baby's wail. The image cleared for an instant. Shapes thrashed, slowed, then faded into a fog of blowing dust. Someone muttered a prayer; then the room was still. Half a world away, two people that they knew and loved were dying in agony, and there was nothing that they could do to help.

Linda was beyond pain. She felt her eyes eaten away, the flesh etched from her bones.
With the very last strength in her body, her blood-slicked fingers closed on Joe's misshapen, lifeless hand. And her last thought was Cadzie . . .
She heard her baby crying, crying, crying . . .
And then there was nothing at all.