"Jack Williamson - Manseed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

really somehow floating? Searching, he found no sense of motion or support, no clue to time or
place, no glint of light, no hint of anything beyond that prickling pressure that wasn't quite even a
pain.
It pressed and pressed, swelling inside him, heavy everywhere, until he thought he couldn't
endure it. Yet when he tried to struggle, every effort seemed to close it tighter, its gray chill
aching always deeper. He found no way to end it.
Still he sank or maybe floated through that soundless, stifling dark, touching nothing, all his
body frozen - if he really had a body - without breath or even need for breath. That itself became
a haunting riddle.
How was he alive?
The blunt throb beat, beat, beat, until he was glad to let it hammer him back into the vacant
dark.
He sat with a margarita by the pool, his bad leg propped on another chair. Spray chilled his
face when the fat man dived, and a sun glint stabbed his eyes. Turning to shield them, he saw the
girl striding behind the sleek-haired manager through the mostly empty tables. They were looking
for him.
"Señor Brink? Mees Drake."
"Megan Drake."
He liked her, even in the dark sunglasses. Vigorous and tall, her hair burnished red under the
sun. She smiled to thank the manager, who had lingered as if for a tip. Waiting for him to go, she
took off the glasses. Her eyes delighted him, greenish gray and very clear.
"You are Don Brink?"
Nodding, waving the manager away, he reached to pull up a chair. With a fleeting glance at
his leg, she sat.
"The - the mercenary soldier?"
"Please - " He had to frown. "If you're media, I don't talk about my work."
"I'm not media." She seemed amused. "In fact, we've learned to be skittish about publicity. I'm
with the Raven Foundation. Down here for a biogenics convention. I happened to hear about you,
and I think we have a job - "
"Afraid you're a little late." With a wry shrug, he moved the leg.
"You've been wounded?" Sudden emotion widened her eyes. "We weren't told."
"A mortar splinter. Still lodged in the knee." Painfully, he grinned. "Dysentery, too, and
recurrent malaria. The medics tell me I've fought my last war."
"Maybe not." She paused to weigh him. "We were told you command unusual fees because
you earn them."
"I tried to. While I could."
"You'll do." A quick smile lit her lean, angular face. "If you want the job."
He shook his head. "In the fix I'm in - "
"No matter." He caught her scent as she leaned closer, something light and clean. Like the
lilacs he remembered blooming in the untended yard around the parsonage in springs when he
was still a child. "Not to us. If you can come to our Albuquerque lab for a consultation - "
She was gone.
Again he was awake, at least half awake, still adrift in that boundless dark. Again he strained
for sound, for any sense of place or time, but all he could find was inside himself. All he knew
was that dull depression throbbing forever in his head and the stinging numbness that gripped
him everywhere. When he fought to move himself, new needles of pain stabbed into his
deadness.
But his fingers flexed!
His toes curled. Stiff wrists began to yield, and stiffer elbows bent. Painfully, he tried to reach
out into the suffocating dark. His unfeeling fingers found something hard and slick and cold that