"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Room of Lost Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

I haven’t been real wreck diving since the Dignity Vessel. I’ve turned
down other wreck divers who heard I wasn’t going out on my own any more
and wanted me to supervise their dives.

What those divers don’t understand is that I was supervising the
Dignity Vessel when I lost two divers and destroyed three friendships.

I can’t stomach doing that again.

So mostly, I camp at Longbow Station. I bought a berth here,
something I vowed I’d never do, but I don’t spend a lot of time in it. Instead,
I sit in the old spacer’s bar and listen to the stories. Sometimes I make up a
few of my own.

When I need money, I take tourists to established wrecks.
Theoretically, those dives make everyone happy—the tourists because
they’ve had a “real” experience; the divers because they got to practice
their skills; and me, because I make an obscene amount of money for very
little work.

But obscene amounts of money don’t do it for me. I bought the berth
here so that I don’t have to crawl back to my ship if I drink too much or feel
like taking a half-hour nap. I haven’t spent money on much else.

I used to use the money to finance my real passion—finding wrecks. I
wasn’t so much interested in salvage, although I’d been known to sell minor
items.

I was interested in the history, in discovering a ship, in figuring out
how it ended up where it was and why it got abandoned and what happened
to its crew.

Over the years, I’d solved a few historical mysteries and found even
more. I liked the not-knowing. I liked the discovery. I liked the exploration
for exploration’s sake.
 And I loved the danger.

I miss that.

But every time I think on trying it again, I see the faces of the crew I
lost: not just Jypé and Junior, who died horribly on that last trip, but Ahmed
and Molse and Egyed and Dita and Pnina and Ioni. All of them died diving.

All of them died diving with me.

I used to lull myself to sleep making up alternate scenarios, scenarios
in which my friends lived.

I don’t do that any more.