"Liz Williams - A Shadow Over the Land" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Liz)

little airstrip, there was a single soldier, in the khaki uniform of the SSC, clutching a
semi-automatic. He looked no more than fourteen. Vauchelade, ignoring the gun and
the uniform, made him help us with the bags. Poor Professor, I thought. Short,
white, and with the florid face of the South African Boer, he could not have looked
more out of place. He was sweating profusely and I felt suddenly sorry for him.
“You’ll have to sign in,” the soldier said, trying to rescue some dignity. I felt
sorry for him, too. He’d joined the army because it sounded more exciting than a life
spent working for his dad on some country farm, and now here he was, guarding an
isolated airstrip on a world that has no enemies.
“Whatever,” Vauchelade said, then strode past the front desk and out onto the
forecourt. The soldier and I followed. “Where’s the car?” Vauche-lade said
impatiently. “I told them when we were coming. This is bloody typical!” I sat down
on the bags. The sudden rush of heat had hit me. It was much hotter than the damp
air of Irubin, or even Nairobi.
“Did you take your pills?” Vauchelade asked.
“No, I forgot.” I said meekly. He did not bother to reply. I knew what he was
thinking. We’d only been here fifteen minutes, and already I was doing things wrong.
I fumbled in the stretch case for the packet of capsules and extracted two. God only
knows what they did to you. I felt them travel the length of my dry throat and then an
icy chill spread upward from my stomach, constricting my heart. It felt like fever.
“Give them a minute to work,” Vauchelade said, not unsympathetically. I
nodded. “You’ll still sweat, but they do cool you down. Look, here’s the car.”
It was an old general terrain vehicle. The engine cover was missing, removed
to cool the engine. The driver hopped down and slung the bags into the back of the
GTV.
“Careful with those,” Vauchelade said irritably. “There’s some delicate
instruments in there.”
“Sorry,” the driver said, perfunctorily. He handed me into the back seat;
Vauchelade took the front.
 “I hope this isn’t the assigned team vehicle,” Vauchelade said over his
shoulder. “I’m not taking anything in this condition out into the veldt.”
I watched the streets unfold through the filthy window of the GTV. It was a
good example of frontier military architecture: row after row of prefabs and one
four-story compartment building festooned with satellite equipment. The drive did
not last long. Yaounde was not a large place, and we were staying in the single hotel.
When we arrived, I collected the imprint for my room and went straight
upstairs. The little window looked out onto a dusty backyard filled with petrol drums
and an old mattress. I think my culture shock was finally beginning, fueled by
disappointment. I had come all this way, out to another world, and it was just like
home.
I remembered my grandfather telling me about those early days, when a
Settler’s claim had been finally granted to Gahran. He was an engineer, my
granddad, and he had been in space, on one of the lunar projects. He said that he
and his people had been filled with hope, that there was at last a land of their own: a
new Africa. I think he really felt it was a kind of return to Eden, given by God, where
they could avoid the mistakes of the past and start again, be the people they once
were. To some extent, he had been right. Irubin was one of the great cities of the
human worlds, and Somalai, and Rununda. But not Yaounde, I thought. Yaounde
was the same as everywhere else. I had not felt that I belonged in Nairobi. I did not
feel that I belonged here, either. I stood and stared out of the little window, and when