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

“And I know,” she says, “how to get people out.”

****

How to get people out.

The words echo in my head as I walk out of the bar. I stop in that
barren corridor and place one hand against the wall, afraid I’m going to be
sick.

Voices swirl in my head and I will them away.

Then I take a deep breath and continue on, heading into the less
habitable parts of the station, the parts slated for renovation or closure.

I want to be by myself.

I need to.

And I don’t want to return to my berth, which suddenly seems too
small, or my ship, which suddenly seems too risky.

Instead I walk across ruined floors and through half-gutted walls, past
closed businesses and graffiti-covered doorways. It’s colder down
here—life support is on, but at the minimum provided by regulation—and I
almost feel like I’m heading into a wreck, the way I used to head into a
wreck when I was a beginner, without thought and without care.

I don’t remember much. I remember thinking it looked pretty. Colored
lights—pale blues and reds and yellows—extended as far as the eye could
see. They twinkled. Around them, only blackness.

My mother held my hand. Her grip was tight through the double layer
of our spacesuit gloves. She muttered how beautiful the lights were.
 Before the voices started.

Before they built, piling one on top of the other, until—it seemed—we
got crushed by the weight.

I don’t remember getting out.

I remember my father, cradling me, trying to stop my shaking. I
remember him giving orders to someone else to steer the damn ship, get
us out of this godforsaken place.

I remember my mother’s eyes through her headpiece, reflecting the
multi-colored lights, as if she had swallowed a sea of stars.

And I remember her voice, blending with the others, like a soprano
joining tenors in the middle of a cantata—a surprise, and yet completely