"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Endgame (english)" - читать интересную книгу автора

like keeping double-watch, looking both ways at once.
"No. It would have sounded dumb, except I know
exactly what you mean. I felt that once, too: young girl
in high school, before I joined the Corps."
"You never told me, Sergeant—Fly."
"We got as close as you could in a motor vehicle not
built for the purpose. She swore she was being reli-
gious about the pill, but she got pregnant anyway. I
offered to pay either way, and she chose the abortion.
After that, well, it just wasn't there anymore; I think
they sucked more than the fetus out, to be perfectly
grotesque about it ... We stopped pretending to be
boyfriend-girlfriend when it just got too painful; and
then she and her parents moved away. She just waved
goodbye, and I nodded."
Arlene snorted. "That's the longest rap you've ever
given me, Fly. Where'd you read it?"
"God's own truth, A.S. Really happened just that
way."
Arlene leaned back against me, while I stared out
the aft port at the redshifted starblob; the mess hall
was at the south end of a north-going ship, 1.9
kilometers from the bridge, which was located amid-
ships, surrounded by a hundred meters of some weird
steel-titanium alloy, and 3.7 kilometers from the
engines, all the way for'ard. Sitting in the mess hall,
we could look directly backward out a huge, thick,
plexiglass window while traveling very near the speed
of light relative to the stars behind us.
It was a fascinating view; according to astronomical
theory—which I'd had plenty of time to read about
since we'd been burning from star to star—at relativ-
istic speeds, the light actually bends: all the stars
forward press together into a blue blob at the front, all
the ones aft press into a red lump at the stern. I wasn't
sure how fast we were going, but the formula was easy
enough to use if I really got interested.
"I just had a horrible thought," I said. "We only
brought along enough Fredpills to last a few days. We
didn't plan on spending weeks here." Arlene didn't
say anything, so I continued. "We'll have to find the
Fred recombinant machine and figure out how to use
it; maybe Sears and Roebuck know." Fredpills sup-
plied the amino acids and vitamins essential to hu-
mans that Freds lacked in their diet; without them, we
would starve to death, no matter how much Fred food
we ate.
"Fly," she said, off in another world, "I'm starting
not to care about the Freds anymore. I know why they
attacked us: they were terrified of what we repre-