The Brink

Начало книги

Long before he awoke Charlent was troubled by a thin, persistent whistling sound which insinuated itself into his dreams. Plaintive and lonely, it seemed to originate in one of the nightmarish half-universes he sometimes visited while asleep—but, even when the buzzer beside the bed had sounded and he was stripping off his pyjamas, it was still audible. It furled through his thoughts like a polar wind.

He tried to forget the sound while he was showering and using the shaver.This is England, Charlent reminded himself. My first time here. But when he looked out into the pre-dawn darkness there was nothing to see but a single greenish light attached, incongruously, to the blank wall of a steel-framed building; and he could have been on any airbase, anywhere. He put on his uniform quickly; his fingers were trembling with cold as he knotted his tie. Apparently it was too early for the heating system to have come on.

Читать дальше →