"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Questing Mind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

And then he had a double loss, first of Olive, then of himself.

It was only a short walk from the solarium to the bed. In six months he has
become a bed-ridden drooling old man whose emaciated form more resembles a
starving man in a magazine ad than the famous, well-photographed writer, robust
from too much good food and not enough exercise. The loss is not related to
Olive for he wrote before he knew her and he wrote after she died.

No. The loss has a physical cause, and he will find it.

On the third day of his quest, he waits until the nurses take their lunch. He
can hear a soap opera at high volume in the kitchen, some hapless heroine
sobbing about murder in the arms of her lover. He uses the glittering metal knob
attached to the plastic headboard to pull himself out of bed. His legs are
unsteady, but he manages to traverse the bedroom. The carpet from bed to door
seems as long as the Sahara. He has to lean against the frame and pant to get
his wind. Has he forgotten to eat in those six weeks? Or did the doctors order
some low-calorie fare that failed to nourish him? All he remembers is burnt
toast, cold soup and roast beef sandwiches made mostly of gristle. Whoever hired
those nurses did not hire them for their cooking ability.

After a few minutes he catches his breath and staggers down the hall, as wobbly
as a child taking his first steps.

Instantly he gets a picture: Paula toddling toward him, hands outstretched, joy
on her pudgy face. He owns that one, and Mary too, balancing herself with one
hand on the couch, the other knocking his magazines off the coffee table,
Olive's three-note laugh echoing in the background. He blinks back tears, so
grateful to have photographs in his head that he stumbles and nearly falls. He
catches the wall to steady himself and listens for heavy nursy footsteps on the
stairs, but the television blares coffee percolating music, and after a moment
he realizes they aren't going to come.

When he reaches the door of his study, he stops. The area around it smells
faintly of pipe smoke and he catches a glimpse of a memory before it disappears
into the recesses of his brain. This room is gone from his head. If he opens the
door, he will see a room he designed as if it were assembled by a stranger.

He does not know what he will find.

The thought fills him with apprehension. Even so, he reaches down and grabs the
knob. It turns, but the door does not open. The knob feels strange to his palm.
He pulls his hand away. This knob does not match the others in the house. It is
square and has a red light pulsing in the center. He recognizes it from the
magazine on his bedstand -- a private in-house security system, keyed to one
person's specifications.
He lets out a silent moan. He must have bought that system and installed it. But
he cannot remember doing so, nor can he remember the code.