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

Sometimes you can see them, floating around the station or pounding
at the windows, crying for help.

Their companions always mount rescue attempts, always lose one or
two more people before giving up, and hoping—praying—that what they’re
seeing isn’t real.

Then they make repairs or do whatever it is they had to do when they
arrived, and fly off, filled with guilt, filled with remorse, filled with sadness,
happy to be the ones who survived.

I’ve heard that story, told in whispers, since I got to Longbow Station
decades ago, and I’ve never commented. I’ve never even rolled my eyes
or shaken my head.

I understand the need for superstition.

Sometimes its rituals and talismans give us a necessary illusion of
safety.

And sometimes it protects us from places that are truly dangerous.

****

“Why in the known universe would I go there to help you?” I ask, with
a little too much edge in my voice.

She studies me. I think I have surprised her. She expected me to tell
her that the Room of Lost Souls is a myth, that someone had lied to her,
that she is staking her quest on something that has never existed.

“You know it, then.” She doesn’t sound surprised. Somehow she
knows that I’ve been there. Somehow she knows that I am one of the only
people to come out of the Room alive.

I don’t answer her question. Instead, I drain my ale and stand. I’m sad
to leave the old spacers’ bar this early in the day, but I’m going to.

I’m going to leave and walk around the station until I find another bar
as grimy as this one.

Then I’m going to go inside and I am, mostly likely, going to get
drunk.

“You should help me,” she says softly, “because I know what the
Room is.”

I start to get up, but she grabs my arm.