"Allen, Roger MacBride - Chronicles of Solace 3 - Shores of Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Roger Macbride)

Satisfied with the airlock settings, Marquez knelt on the deck and opened the flush-mounted hatch that led to the bottom deck and the engine room. He went down into the cramped confines of the engineering spaces, Koffield following behind.

It was dark and hot belowdecks. With the ship on standby, the ventilation system was set to minimum, and there were only dim marker lights to lead the way. Marquez broke a sweat almost instantly as he led Koffield through a tight maze of installed equipment and storage lockers. At last he came to the narrow engine-room hatch. The hatch slid open and shut, the door itself fitting into the space between the engine room’s inner and outer bulkheads.

The shielded hatch was heavy, and it took a good solid shove to slide it sideways out of the way. He stepped inside, and Koffield followed. There was barely room for both men at once in the cramped compartment. The ship’s reactionless thrust generator took up the bulk of the space, along with the plumbing and compressors for the auxiliary rocket propulsion system.

He pulled the engine-room hatch to and used the manual clamping lever to seal it down tight. He powered up the compartment’s lights and ventilation system, then switched on every diagnostic and display system, cranking them all up to full. He turned on the intercom system, but set the system into full monitor, focused on the main deck with maximum gain and an open loop circuit. If any third intercom station keyed in—or if anyone tried to tap in from outside the circuit—it would close the loop and set up a audio feedback that ought to produce a head-splitting squeal—and no sound at all from the engine room.

“All right, then,” Marquez said, speaking in a low voice. “There are so many fields and circuits running now, that we ought to be jamming just about any frequency that could penetrate through the hull and the shielding on this compartment.”

Koffield nodded. “Good. I was hoping you’d say that. I’ve been on the lookout for how we might get a chance to talk. Long ago and far away, I had some very nice pocket jamming gadgets with me—but I’ve lost my luggage a few times since then.”

“So let’s talk.”

“Let’s. But bear in mind hecould still be listening in—or his ArtInts could be listening for him, more likely. The technology he’s had a chance to play with—the odds are very good that he’s got some sort of spy gear we wouldn’t even know how to detect, let alone jam.”

“Yeah, but we’ve done the best we could, and the odds on privacy aren’t going to get any better. If what we do say offends him, screw him if he can’t take a joke. So what have you spotted?”

Koffield shook his head. “Whathaven’t I spotted? This place isbig. There are at least five levels below where we were having lunch, and there could easily be more with the entrances hidden away. It’s too big a place for one or two men to do more than a rough survey. Most of what I’ve found so far is hardware and workshops and supply stores.”

“Yeah. That matches up pretty well with what I’ve managed to see.”

“I’m going to have one last look around tonight, before I give it up.”

“Should I head out?”

“Probably not,” Koffield said. “We’ve been at it pretty hard. One more one-man search tonight will be far enough to push our luck. If we keep snooping too long and too much, DeSilvo might not be very happy about it. I don’tthink DeSilvo is likely to have left the crown jewels out in plain sight, but I just want one last chance to see if I can come up with any interesting surprises. Which reminds me, not a surprise, but it’s something odd: Half the gear I’ve seen looks as worn-out as the Personnel Access Tunnel, and half looks like it’s never been used.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that too.”

Koffield nodded. “And I couldn’t even tell you what half the new-looking equipment is for. I think we’re looking at what his robots scavenged from abandoned cities on Glister, mixed in with whatever machines he removed from the Dark Museum, or else what he’s built from Dark Museum plans.”

Marquez frowned and thought for a minute. “Now that I think about it, some of the never-been-used stuff kind of looked new and old at the same time. Gear that’s never been operated, but has been sitting around for a long time.”

Koffield nodded. “Mostof what’s around here has been sitting for a long time. This whole place has been mothballed for a century or more. A lot of the lower sections are still powered down, no heat or ventilation. From what I can see, it all fits with the story he told us.”

“I agree. Even if the story was nuts. Which brings me to my main question—ishe nuts? What do you think—is he sane, or not?”

Koffield shook his head. “I don’t even think it’s a meaningful question. If sanity is having more or less the same perception of the outside universe as those around you—then no, not by a long shot. But DeSilvo isn’tlike those around him—not anymore. Maybe because there hasn’t been anyone around him. He’s lived in one form or another of isolation for a long, long time. He’s had the power of a god for longer than that. He made aworld —even if it’s a world that’s falling apart.”

“And he’sstill a god,” Marquez grumbled. “The robots around here do whatever he wants, almost before he knows that he wants it. He’s got absolute control over this place—and damn near absolute control over us.”

“He might have the power,” Koffield agreed, “but I get the impression that he doesn’tuse it much. Maybe he doesn’t want to use it—even doesn’t dare use it.”

“Why not?”

“For starters, watching all of us constantly would just take too much time, even if he handed most of the job off to ArtInts. The ArtInts would still have to report to him in some fashion—and he couldn’t trust the ArtInts to know what was and wasn’t significant, at least at first. These ArtInts are here to keep the machine running and the base clean. They aren’t programmed for spy work, and for the most part aren’t sophisticated enough to do it well. He’d have to get hugely detailed reports to be sure they didn’t miss anything. It would be close to a full-time job for him just to keep up to date on the reports. Controlling us,using what he knows from spying on us, would be even worse. But it goes beyond that. He doesn’t dare try and control us, for fear of getting us angry—or angrier, I should say. Because, on some level, he knows he needs us. He needs our free and willing cooperation.”

“For what?” Marquez demanded. “Aswhat? That’s what I’ve been sweating over. To use us as lab animals, running his giant underground maze?”