"Connie Willis - Schwarzschild Radius" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

" 'Dear son,' " Muller reads, " 'I have not heard from you in three months. Are you hurt? Are you ill? Do
you need anything?' "

The last letter is from Professor Zuschauer in Jena. I can see his name quite clearly in the corner of the
envelope, though mine is blurred beyond recognition. I tear it open. There is nothing written on the red
paper.

I thrust it at Muller. "Read this," I say.

"I have not finished with your mother's letter yet," Muller says, but he takes the letter and reads: " 'Dear
Herr Rottschieben, I received your letter yesterday. I could hardly decipher your writing. Do you not
have decent pens at the front? The disease you describe is called Neumann's disease or pemphigus—' "

I snatch the letter out of Muller's hands and run out the door. "Let me come with you!" Muller shouts.

"You must stay and watch the wireless!" I say joyously, running along the communication trench.
Schwarzschild does not have the front inside him. He has pemphigus, he has Neumann's disease, and
now he can be invalided home to hospital.

I go down and think I have tripped over a discarded helmet or a tin of beef, but there is a crash, and dirt
and revetting fall all around me. I hear the low buzz of a daisy cutter and flatten myself into the trench, but
the buzz does not become a whine. It stops, and there is another crash and the trench caves in.

I scramble out of the trench before it can suffocate me and crawl along the edge toward Schwarzschild's
dugout, but the trench has caved in all along its length, and when I crawl up and over the loose dirt, I lose
it in the swirling snow.

I cannot tell which way the front lies, but I know it is very close. The sound comes at me from all
directions, a deafening roar in which no individual sounds can be distinguished. The snow is so thick, I
cannot see the burst of flame from the muzzles as the guns fire, and no part of the horizon looks redder
than any other. It is all red, even the snow.

I crawl in what I think is the direction of the trench, but as soon as I do, I am in barbed wire. I stop,
breathing hard, my face and hands pressed into the snow. I have come the wrong way. I am at the front.
I hear a sound out of the barrage of sound, the sound of tires on the snow, and I think it is a tank and
cannot breathe at all. The sound comes closer, and in spite of myself I look up and it is the recruit who
was at the quartermaster's.

He is a long way away, behind a coiled line of barbed wire, but I can see him quite clearly in spite of the
snow. He has the motorcycle fixed, and as I watch, he flings his leg over it and presses his foot down.
"Go!" I shout. "Get out!" The motorcycle jumps forward. "Go!"

The motorcycle comes toward me, picking up speed. It rears up, and I think it is going to jump the
barbed wire, but it falls instead, the motorcycle first and then the recruit, spiraling slowly down into the
iron spikes. The ground heaves, and I fall, too.

I have fallen into Schwarzchild's dugout. Half of it has caved in, the timber balks sticking out at angles
from the heap of dirt and snow, but the blanket is still over the door, and Schwarzschild is propped in a
chair. The doctor is bending over him. Schwarzschild has his shirt off. His chest looks like Hans's did.