"Walter Jon Williams - Voice of the Whirlwind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

familiar antiseptic smell, and the familiar nurses. The nurses’
uniforms were pin-striped in the colors of the wards. Yellow was
for Burns, red for Intensive Care, soothing blue for Maternity.
Steward’s bracelet was a pleasant light green and signified his
home in the Psychology ward.
He wasn’t physically ill, so they let him wear regular clothes.
When he took his strolls through the other parts of the hospital,
he always wore long sleeves so that he could push the green
bracelet far up his arm, under the cuff.
He didn’t want people thinking he was crazy.



“There was a war in Marseilles between the teen gangs,”
Steward said. “They broke out from time to time. I was a
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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind



member of Canards Chronique, had been since I was twelve. We
dealt in information, mainly. Software, proscribed wetware.
Drugs, too. The whole range of what Americans call juvecrime.
We were bright kids.” He remembered sitting with a blond-
haired girl on a wrought-iron balcony, drinking whiskey and
watching the Mediterranean for the last time. Heartbreakingly
beautiful, the sea, bluer and deeper than the blond girl’s eyes,
bluer than the reflected skies he saw from Ashraf’s window. He
remembered the way distant automatic-weapons fire sounded,
echoing off the stucco fronts of the houses, the low concrete
gutters. He remembered as well his own weariness, the feeling
that he didn’t want to do this anymore. He could play the game
too well. He was tired of manipulating people.
The girl cocked her head, listened. “Sounds like the Femmes
Sauvages on turf defense,” she said. “Who’s attacking?”
Etienne had been shopping that information around in the last
twelve hours. “Skin Samurai,” he said.
The girl shrugged. There was a touch of sunburn on her cheeks,
her nose. She looked at him. “Want to go inside?” she asked.
Etienne Njagi Steward lit a cigarette. “D’accord,” he said. He
didn’t plan on seeing her again.
“I was only sixteen,” said Steward, “but I knew there were better
things in life than dying for a couple square blocks in the Old
Quarter.”
Dr. Ashraf’s oiled hair hung to his shoulders. His. fleshy,
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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind


immobile face betrayed little interest. “Is that when you decided