"Anderson, Poul - Star Fox" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

"Welcome home," Vadбsz said. "You timed yourself well."
"What's going on here, anyway?" Heim inquired. "Where are the servants? Why put a camp stove in a perfectly good kitchen?"
"Because machines are competent enough cooks but will never be chefs," Vadбsz said. "I promised your daughter a goulash, not one of those lyophilized glue-stews but a genuine handmade Gulyбs and sneeze-with-joy in the spices."
"Oh. Fine. Only I'd better get me"
"Nothing. A Hungarian never sets the table with less than twice as much. You may, if you wish, contribute some red wine. So, once more, welcome home, and it is good to see you in this humor."
"With reason." Heim rubbed his great hands and smiled like a happy tiger. "Yes, indeedy."
"What have you done, Daddy?" Lisa asked.
"'Fraid I can't tell you, jente min. Not for a while." He saw the first symptoms of mutiny, chucked her under the chin, and said, "It's for your own protection."
She stamped her foot. "I'm not a child, you know!"
"Come, now; come, now," interrupted Vadбsz. "Let us not spoil the mood. Lisa, will you set a third place? We are eating in the high style, Gunnar, in your sunroom."
"Sure," she sighed. "If I can have the general intercom on, vid and audio both. Can I, please, Daddy?"
Heim chuckled, stepped out to the central control panel, and unlocked the switch that made it possible to activate any pickup in the apartment from any other room. Vadбsz's voice drifted after him:
"Now the rich man died and he didn't fare so welliung.
Glory, hallelujah, in-ro-de-rung!
He couldn't go to Heaven so he had to go to Helliung.
Glory, hallelujah"
and on to the end.
When Heim came back, he remarked in an undertone, because she'd be watching and listening, "Lisa doesn't want to miss a second of you, eh?"
The finely molded face turned doleful. "Gunnar, I didn't mean"
"Oh, for crying in the beer!" Heim slapped Vadбsz on the back. "You can't imagine how much I'd rather have her in orbit around you than some of that adolescent trash. Everything seems to be turning sunward for me."
The Magyar brightened. "I trust," he said, "this means you have found a particularly foul way to goosh our friends of Alerion."
"Shh!" Heim jerked a thumb at the intercom screen. "Let's see, what wine should I dial for your main course?"
"Hey, ha, this is quite a list. Are you running a hotel?"
"No, to be honest, my wife tried to educate me in wines but never got far. I like the stuff but haven't much of a palate. So except when there's company, I stay with beer and whisky."
Lisa appeared in the screen. She laughed and sang,
"Now the Devil said, 'This is no hoteliung.
Glory, hallelujah, in-ro-de-rung!
This is just a plain and ordinary helliung.'
Glory, hallelujah, in-ro-de-rung!"
Vadбsz put thumb to nose and waggled his fingers. She stuck out her tongue. They both grinned, neither so broadly as Heim.
And supper was a meal with more cheer, more sense of being home, than any he could remember since Connie died. Afterward he could not recall what was saidbanter, mostlyit had not been real talk but a kind of embracement.
Lisa put the dishes in the service cubicle and retired demurely to bed; she even kissed her father. Heim and Vadбsz went downramp to the study. He closed the door, took Scotch from a cabinet, ice and soda from a coldbox, poured, and raised his own glass.
Vadбsz's clinked against it. "And a voice valedictory ... " the minstrel toasted. "Who is for Victory? Who is for Liberty? Who goes home?"
"I'll drink to that," said Heim, and did, deeply. "Where's it from?"
"One G. K. Chesterton, a couple of centuries ago. You have not heard of him? Ah, well, they no longer care for such unsophisticated things on Earth. Only in the colonies are men so naive as to think victories are possible."
"Maybe we can make 'em change their minds here, too." Heim sat down and reached for a pipe.
"Well," Vadбsz said, in a cool tone but with a kind of shiver through his slim form, "now we come to business. What has happened, these last several days while I fretted about idle?"
"I'll begin from the beginning," Heim said. He felt no compunction about revealing what Twyman had admitted, since this Listener could be trusted. His acquaintance with Vadбsz, though brief, had been somewhat intense.
The Magyar wasn't surprised anyway. "I knew they had no intention to get New Europe back when none would hear me."
"I found a buck who would," Heim said, and went on with his account. As he finished, Vadбsz's jaw fell with a nearly audible clank.
"A privateer, Gunnar? Are you serious?"
"Absodamnlutely. So's Coquelin, and several more we talked with." Heim's mirth had dissolved. He drew hard on his pipe, streamed the smoke out through dilated nostrils, and said:
"Here's the situation. One commerce raider in the Phoenix can make trouble out of all proportion to its capabilities. Besides disrupting schedules and plans, it ties up any number of warships, which either have to go hunt for it or else run convoy. As a result, the Aleriona force confronting ours in the Marches will be reduced below parity. So if then Earth gets tough, both in space and at the negotiations tablewe shouldn't have to get very tough, you see, nothing so drastic that the peacemongers can scream too . loudone big naval push, while that raider is out there gobbling Aleriona shipsWe can make them disgorge New Europe. Also give us some concessions for a change."
"It may be. It may be." Vadasz remained sober. "But how can you get a fighting craft?"
"Buy one and refit it. As for weapons, I'm going to dispatch a couple of trusty men soon, in a company speedster, to Staurn--you know the place?"
"I know of it. Ah-ha!" Vadasz snapped his fingers. His eyes began to glitter.
"Yep. That's where our ship will finish refitting. Then off for the Auroran System."
"But ... will you not make yourself a pirate in the view of the law?"
"That's something which Coquelin is still working on. He says he thinks there may be a way to make everything legal and, at the same time, ram a spike right up the exhaust of Twyman and his giveaway gang. But it's a complicated problem. If the ship does have to fly the Jolly Roger, then Coquelin feels reasonably sure France has the right to try the crew, convict them, and pardon them. Of course, the boys might then have to stay in French territory, or leave Earth altogether for a colonybut they'll be millionaires, and New Europe would certainly give them a glorious reception."
Heim blew a smoke ring. "I haven't time to worry about that," he continued. "I'll simply have to bull ahead and take my chances on getting arrested. Because you'll understand how Coquelin and his allies in the French governmentor in any government, because not every nation on Earth has gone hollowbellywell, under the Constitution, no country can make warlike preparations. If we did get help from some official, that'd end every possibility of legalizing the operation. We'd better not even recruit our men from a single country, or from France at all.