"Charles Stross - A Colder War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

whale designed by a god with a sense of humour. It takes tense minutes to
winch it in and manoeuvre it safely onto the platform. Marines take up
position, shining torches in through two of the portholes that bulge
myopically from the smooth curve of the sub's nose. Up on top someone
is talking into a handset plugged into the stubby conning tower; the hatch
locking wheel begins to turn.

"Gorman, sir,'' It's the lieutenant. In the light of the sodium floods
everything looks sallow and washed-out; the soldier's face is the colour of
damp cardboard, slack with relief.

Roger waits while the submariner -- Gorman -- clambers unsteadily down
from the top deck. He's a tall, emaciated-looking man, wearing a red
thermal suit three sizes too big for him: salt-and-pepper stubble textures
his jaw with sandpaper. Right now, he looks like a cholera victim; sallow
skin, smell of acrid ketones as his body eats its own protein reserves, a
more revolting miasma hovering over him. There's a slim aluminium
briefcase chained to his left wrist, a bracelet of bruises darkening the skin
above it. Roger steps forward.

"Sir?'' Gorman straightens up for a moment: almost a shadow of military
attention. He's unable to sustain it. "We made the pickup. Here's the QA
sample; the rest is down below. You have the unlocking code?'' he asks
wearily.

Jourgensen nods. "One. Five. Eight. One. Two. Two. Nine.''



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A Colder War - a novelette by Charles Stross

Gorman slowly dials it into a combination lock on the briefcase, lets it fall
open and unthreads the chain from his wrist. Floodlights glisten on
polythene bags stuffed with white powder, five kilos of high-grade heroin
from the hills of Afghanistan; there's another quarter of a ton packed in
boxes in the crew compartment. The lieutenant inspects it, closes the case
and passes it to Jourgensen. "Delivery successful, sir.'' From the ruins on
the high plateau of the Taklamakan desert to American territory in
Antarctica, by way of a detour through gates linking alien worlds: gates
that nobody knows how to create or destroy except the Predecessors --
and they aren't talking.

"What's it like through there?'' Roger demands, shoulders tense. "What
did you see?''

Up on top, Suslowicz is sitting in the sub's hatch, half slumping against
the crane's attachment post. There's obviously something very wrong with
him. Gorman shakes his head and looks away: the wan light makes the
razor-sharp creases on his face stand out, like the crackled and shattered