"Steve Perry - Aliens 01 - Earth Hive" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

unable to rest.
Sasha sat at a table next to the holoprojection chair, using a fork made of linear plastic to stir
some ugly noodles around on her plate. The tableware was strong enough to lift the food but would
curl up like cardboard if you tried to stick somebody with it. Somebody like yourself.
“Hey, Billie,” Sasha said. “Check out Deedee, she’s switching channels on the ’jector every
three seconds. Why, I think that girl is mentally disturbed!”
Sasha laughed. Billie knew Sasha’s history. She had pushed her father into a vat of jewelry
cleaning acid when she was nine. She’d been here for eleven years because every time they asked
her whether she’d do it again if she had the chance, she grinned and told them sure. Every day of the
week and twice on Sunday.
Billie glanced at Deedee. The girl was gazing at the “jector as if hypnotized. The tiny holograms
blinked as she changed the channels. With four or five hundred choices, it would take even Deedee a
while to see them all.
“C’mon, have a seat. Try some of this worm puke, it’s real good.”
Billie sat, almost collapsing.
“You on blues again?”
Billie sighed. “Greens.”
“Crap, what’d you do, strangle a nurse?”
“The dreams.”
Billie glanced at the tiny viewer in front of Deedee. A deep-space ship flew across the void.
Blink. A car chase on a multilane surface road. Blink. A documentary on feral elves. Blink.
“C’mon, Billie,” Sasha said, “you only have what, a month left until your hearing?”
“I won’t skate this time either, Sash. They can’t figure it out. They say my folks died in an
explosion. I know better. I was there!”
 “Ease up, kid. The monitors—”
“Hey, fuck the monitors!” Billie shoved her plate across the table, scattering the safety
tableware and the noodles. The rubbery plate fell to the cushioned floor, bounced, but made hardly
any sound. “They can send a ship a hundred light-years away to another system, they can make an
android from amino soup and plastic, but they can’t cure me of nightmares!”
Attendants appeared as if by magic, but Billie’s rage couldn’t stand any longer against the
sedatives in her system. She slumped.
Behind her, Deedee said quietly, “Hold channel.”
The image of a man with slicked-back hair and a smallish beard shined in the air before her.
And behind him, behind him was—was—
“—join us, my friends,” the man’s voice spoke into the speaker implanted behind Deedee’s
mastoid bone. “Join the Church of Immaculate Incubation. Receive the ultimate communion. Become
one with the True Messiah.…”
Deedee smiled as the attendants came and helped Billie to her feet. Billie didn’t see the True
Messiah as she left.
“Dammit, let go!”
Then somebody pressed a green patch to her carotid and Billie stopped even that much of
struggle.

Wilks and the robot reached the security door leading into MILCOM HQ Intel One. A
scanning laser tapped a red dot against his eye and by the time he had finished blinking, the door’s
comp had IDed him and begun to roll open. The bot said, “Go on in. I’ll wait here.”
Wilks did as he was told. He felt the pressure of stares against him, knowing he was being
watched by computers and probably live guards, that his every move was recorded. Fuck it.
There was only one other door in the corridor, so he couldn’t miss it. It opened as he
approached. He stepped into the office. Nothing but an oval table, big enough to seat a dozen