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

“But I put detectives on the trail years ago, and there’s no evidence
he was ever captured. No evidence that he met with anyone from the other
side,” she says with surprising diplomacy. “No evidence that his ship was
captured. No evidence that he vanished during the last conflicts of the war,
like the official biographies say.”

“No real evidence?” I ask. “Or just no evidence that can be found
after all this time?”

“No real evidence,” she says. “We’ve looked in the official records
and the unofficial ones. I’ve interviewed some of his crew.”

“From the missing vessel,” I say.

“That’s just it,” she says. “His ship isn’t missing.”

So I frown. She has no reason to approach me. Even in my old
capacity, I didn’t search for missing humans. I searched for famous ships.

“Then I don’t understand,” I say.

“We know where he is,” she says. “I want to hire you to get him back.”

“I don’t find people,” I say mostly because I don’t want to tell her that
he’s probably not still alive.

No human lives more than 120 years without enhancements. No
human who has spent a lot of time in space can survive an implantation of
those enhancements.

“I’m not asking you to,” she says. “I’m hoping you’ll recover him.”

“Recover?” She’s got my full attention now. “Where is he?”

The tip of her tongue touches her top lip. She’s nervous. It’s clear she
isn’t sure she should tell me, even though she wants to hire me.

Finally, she says, “He’s in the Room of Lost Souls.”

****

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you. The Room of Lost Souls is a myth.

I’ve only heard it talked about in whispers. An abandoned space
station, far from here, far from anything. Most crews avoid it. Those who do
stay do so only in an emergency, and even then they don’t go deep inside.
 Because people who go into the room at the center of the station,
what would be, in modern space stations, the control room but which clearly
isn’t, those people never come out.