"John Varley - Anthology - Super Heroes - Various Authors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

Dropping his hand from his face to his chest, he reached into his lab coat,
pulled out a .44 Magnum, and quickly fired off five shots point-blank into
the chest of the patient he called Meteor Man.
Meteor Man had almost no time to react, taking a quick deep breath as he
felt the dull impact of the shells against his chest, not even noticing that
instinctively his hand had tried to move to block the bullets' impact.
Time for a Hero
He felt no pain, no harm.
He was speechless. The bullets had impacted, but had not penetrated.
Looking down at his hand, he felt a peculiar sensation of warmth.
There in the palm of his hand were the five shells, tips slightly flattened
and worse for wear from their impact with his chest.
"You see?" said Kirschenbaum. "Bullets bounce off you, and though you
don't consciously remember how to use your powers, your body and your
subconscious do, as evidenced by 'your catching the shells at super-speed."
Meteor Man just stared at the still-warm shells in his hand.
"Come here," said Kirschenbaum, continuing his quest to prove to his
patient that he was indeed invulnerable. "Please put your hand down here on
the table."
Meteor Man dully complied.
Dr. Kirschenbaum then took out a surgical saw, turned it on, and
proceeded to file down the high-speed blade on each of the fingers of the
patient's right hand. In no time at all, the steel blade was reduced to a pile of
metal shavings, while Meteor Man's fingers and skin remained unharmed.
Meteor Man's eyes moved back and forth from his unscathed right hand to
the shell-laden palm of his left hand.
Dr. Kirschenbaum guided him over to a telemonitor and said, "Observe."
The monitor clicked on.
The Update News Channel was tuned in. A stern-faced anchorman was in
the middle of a story:
***
"… there is still no word on the condition of Meteor Man, who was
apparently dazed when he was hit in the head by a bazooka shell. The
thought-to-be-invulnerable hero has faced many greater adversaries before
(visual montage of stock news footage of his earlier exploits), including
the now-famous stifling of an atomic bomb that threatened to level Las
Vegas. America wishes Meteor Man a speedy recovery…"
Brian M. Thomson
Kirschenbaum hit the control and froze the screen on a head shot of
Meteor Man accepting the Medal of Freedom from President Levin.
Meteor Man looked from the monitor's image to the mirror across the
room.
The face was the same.
He was Meteor Man.
It was the only possible answer… and he was their only possible hope.
He slowly turned back to Dr. Kirschenbaum and said softly, "What do I
have to do?"
Kirschenbaum put his arm around the costumed hero's shoulder and said,
"Your memory should return in a short time. We can go over videotapes of
your past exploits later to try to jog it back into place. For now, we must