"Battletech.-.Jade.Phoenix.01.-.Way.Of.The.Clan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Battletech)

"I am not told. Just that it will be in the scientist caste. I will be an apprentice, A Tech in training to be a scientist."
"That sounds good, Peri. Important."
"It is. As consolations go, it is acceptable. That is the way of the Clan, as they so often tell us. We accept what comes. Death or honor, success or failure. But I wanted to be a warrior, needed to be one. You knew that better than anybody. For some reason, I have never fathomed, you seem to perceive things the rest of us do not."
"I used to think we all knew everything about each other, that such understanding was no special talent."
"But we were each different. I always thought that was the interesting thing about our sibko—about most sibkos, I suspect."
"What do you mean?"
"We come from the same gene pool. With the same genetic materials, we might have been identical in most ways. But, just as there is a great deal of physical variation among us, there are also differences of talent and ability.- It says a lot for our genetic forebears, tends to confirm the superiority of successful Bloodnamed warriors and their achievements, that there are more than sufficient good traits in the two geneparents to be doled out among their sibspring. Validates the worthiness of the Kerensky program, in a way. Still, I wonder why so much variation in our sibko? Seems to me we should all have become warriors—or, conversely, all of us should have flushed out. But the differences in our performances have been phenomenal."
She glanced around the room, where the others made various sleeping sounds. She seemed to be searching for answers to die questions she had posed.
"You know, now I think of it, I would like to study that. Certainly, if they choose to lock me up with a bunch of scientists, I stand a good chance of attempting such study."
They fell into an uncomfortable silence. Aidan wondered if one should say something positive, thoughtful, comforting at a time like this. As Clansmen, it was so hard for any of them to come up with a pleasantry, a piece of well-considered counsel or even a polite farewell. If sibparent Glynn had not told them all those stories about heroes in other cultures, they might not even have been aware that there were alternate customs, alternate behaviors. Peri apparently had the same problems with saying goodbye, for she said, "Go back to sleep, Aidan. We do not know how to part from each other, even though we have grown up together and have rarely been apart until now. It was the same with all the others when they left. Maybe that is why most of us try to steal away instead of saying long goodbyes."
Aidan nodded and lay back against his pillow. The dark blur disappeared, then returned.
"Aidan?"
"Yes?"
"You could have killed me that day. I was in your sights and nearly disabled. I could sense the moment when it should have happened. Why did you hesitate?"
"I am not certain. It did not seem right to kill you, so I did not."
"You were wrong. You should not have hesitated."
Then she disappeared again and did not return.
In the morning, with Peri's bunk in readiness for orderlies to transport it away, none of the other remaining members of the sibko mentioned her absence. Marthe did stare at the bunk for a brief time, but what she felt or thought was not evident on her face.
That same day Falconer Joanna flung open the barracks door, stood outlined in bright light, then announced with something distantly resembling cheerfulness that it was time to scrub down the entire building. Inside and out. At one time the sibkin might have exchanged wondering glances, the kind that clearly showed there was something strange about the order. Joanna had always left maintenance of the barracks to the sibko and had seemed satisfied with its performance. It seemed significant that she wanted a thoroughgoing cleaning now. Without the least non-verbal communication between them, the sibkin merely awaited their specific orders.
Holding the bucket and mop in front of her as if it were disease-ridden, Joanna handed them to Aidan and told him he was assigned the bathroom area, the "Cave" as it was called in Clan lore. And for good reason, Aidan thought as he entered it: it was like a cave, dark and damp. Turning on a lamp, Aidan worked hard at making the room not only clean but shiny. Every piece of offending matter, no matter what might have been its origin, was rubbed or scraped away until the room looked as it had the first day they had arrived at the barracks. Then it struck him. The first day. Which meant that some previous training unit had painstakingly scrubbed and cleaned it before his sibko had arrived. Which suggested that they were now leaving the barracks for the last time, preparing it for its next occupants. Which got Aidan so excited he could feel his heart beat fast and hard.
It was all he could do to remove the debris he had gathered up, so anxious was he to see if the others sensed what he had. Outside the Cave, he glanced at Marthe, who was shining the metal rim of a window.
"We are leaving here, quiaff?" he said.
She did not look up from her task. "Aff. Or, at least, that seems possible."
He tried not to notice the detachment in her voice, the indifference to what should have been an exciting moment. She just went on with her polishing. The surface already looked shiny enough.
"Where are we going, do you think?" Aidan asked her.
"There seems little doubt. The other side of Ironhold, where the heavy 'Mechs are."
"It is the final test, then?"
"The preliminary to it, I suspect. If you recall Falconer Joanna's instructions from last week, before we reach the Trial, we must complete our training using fully operational neurohelmets mated with actual 'Mechs, not just the usual simulators. Also, we will become familiar with the 'Mechs we will use in the Trial of Position."
"I can hardly believe the time has come."
She turned to him, frowning. "Why is it so hard to believe? It must come sooner or later, quiaff?"
"Well, aff. But are you not excited by its coming?"
"No more than I should be. It is, after all, just the next stage of the training."
' 'But it will decide our lives. Are you not worried about that?"
"Worried? Why should I be worried? Whoever succeeds will become a warrior. Whoever does not will be assigned another role to play, another caste to serve. I am satisfied with whatever comes."
"Are you? Truly, Marthe?"
"Of course. We do what we must to promote the goals of our society. That is the way of the Clan."
Aidan stared at her for a while, watching how calmly she finished up the job of polishing the metal.
"I do believe, Marthe, that you speak the truth. You will accept what comes."
"Of course I will. And so will you."
"I do not know you anymore."
"You never did. Nobody ever really knows anybody."
"I did know you. I did."
"You may think so."
"You will allow that, will you?"
"Yes."
Aidan nodded and walked away from her. He was afraid of what he might have said next. When the Trial was over and they were both warriors, they would have to have a good, long talk. He needed that almost as much as he needed to succeed in the Trial of Position.
Ter Roshak sat beside the pilot in the skimmer that took the sibko to its new training area. Aidan noticed that the commander never looked back at them, just as he had barely seemed to notice them when he boarded, just as he had always moved among them with supreme indifference except when he had a reason to inflict inexplicable punishment. It was said that he sometimes took out one of the 'Mechs in a Trial, just to mow down a specific cadet who had incurred his displeasure. In some stories he was a ghostlike or even godlike presence swooping down on an unsuspecting cadet and slicing his 'Mech into small pieces. Joanna said they were all lies, these stories, these myths, but—in the tradition of superstitions throughout the known universe—no sensible, forthright, unimaginative training officer could convince cadets of the foolishness of the stories surrounding Falconer Commander Ter Roshak.
On one side of the skimmer's interior, Bret and Rena pressed their faces against the skimmer's viewports, competing to spot bits of terrain or activity in the landscape. Their enthusiasm reminded Aidan that, after all, the four of them were still young, still barely out of childhood.
Occasionally Aidan looked out his window, noted that most of the landscape resembled the area they left a couple of hours ago. For a while they passed over a large lake, where hundreds of fishermen were casting out nets or dangling complex networks of lines in the water.
Next to him, Marthe scarcely ever looked out. She stared forward or at the screen of a pocket computer, apparently considering something in her studies that she probably had already mastered. Perhaps her academic scores were consistently the best because she was continually verifying what she already knew better than anyone else in the sibko. What drove her to such perfectionism? Aidan wondered. He had a drive to succeed, as did Bret and Rena, but Marthe's was different. With Marthe the drive was obsession.