"Web Rider by Jayge Carr" - читать интересную книгу автора (Carr Jayge)

WEBRIDER
By Jayge Carr
The Eternal Second ended, and once again I had survived. There was a reception committee at the terminus. Not for me, for what I carried.
"Left thigh," I said, as a dozen anxious-eyed humans converged on me before I could take a second step away from the terminus out of which I had just emerged. I turned so that my left side faced them, and three banged into each other to kneel. I pressed the under-the-skin control at my waist, and my left thigh split neatly and painlessly open. Impatient fingers probed the organ synthetic-lined cavity revealed. What they wanted was there, of course; the thigh carry is safe, if blighted uncomfortable for the carrier.
If Whatever-they-wanted had been smaller, I'd've used my mouth. I'm one of those who can keep their mouths shut while riding.
Then they had the four unbreakable vials out and were hasting away with them. What was left of the reception
committee was shaking my hands and trying to shove beakers full of unknown swizzles and platters of equally exotic eatments at me, while gabbling out thank-yous at a kilometer-a-second rate.
I'm left-handed, so it was my right arm I stuck out. "High-nutri. Now." My third and fourth words on this world I have never seen before and would probably never see again once I'd been called off of it.
They'd been briefed. A medico-a short but swishious fem with come-hither-and-enjoy eyes-clamped a dingus of a type I'd never seen before around my arm. I felt something physically digging in, invading my body-integral space to insert the nutri. But primitive as the method was, it worked fast. I could feel the dizziness wearing off, a contented glow spreading outward from my arm.
"Thanks," I told her. "Good stuff."
"Any time, honored Webrider. I'm Medico Miyoshi Alnasr. If, during your stay on our world, you should again require my services-" She pressed a head-only mini-holo of herself, no bigger than my thumbnail, against the back of my wrist, where it adhered neatly. "-just peel the outer layer to activate the summoner. I answer," her voice dropped, "twenty-eight hours a day . . . ."
Groupie, I thought, but I didn't jerk off the summoner. Odds were I would need her professional services at some point; turista is a chronic disease among webriders. But as for anything else . . . no mistaking the look in her eyes, in all their eyes. Until what I carried did what they needed it to do, I could have asked for. half their world-and gotten it.
There was more in her eyes, though. An avidity I saw far too often. This one liked the glamor and notoriety of succoring a webrider, the more the better-and the how of it didn't matter a rotted bean to her.
Webriders learn to live with that, and the envy. Webriders are never allowed to forget that they are the true elite, those very, very few who can step in a terminus on one world and step out-alive!-on another. For the rest, it can only be slower-than-light wombships, taking months and years-even at the compressed time of relativistic velocity-from one world to another.
We have not only the freedom of the stars, but the unspeakable glory of riding the web. The Eternal Second. The ultimate experience.
Webriding. Flowing through stars, points of flame running through hands that aren't hands, the psychic You bound up in the physical You that's just a pattern sliding along the web, held together and existing only by the strength of will of the webrider. Sailing on evanescent wings of mind through the energy/matter currents of space, down one fragile strand of the web and up another. Feeling torn apart, as the pattern that is You is spread over parsecs, smeared across the stars; and yet, godlike, knowing those stars, sensing with psychic "eyes" the entire spectrum of space/time, so that the beat of the pulsars is like the universe's throbbing heart ....
We have our glory, and one of the prices we pay for it is the groupies.
Not that I was worried about the medico; she was one of the safe kind of groupie. The only kind the locals would and should let near a webrider. The greedy but selfish kind, wanting close but not too close, snatching a rubbed-off glamor. But never for a second considering risking her own precious hide for the real thing.
It's the other kind of groupie who is so dangerous, the real groupie. The one who will do anything to get on the web. Infinitely dangerous to a rider, to a rider's peace of mind, so necessary for safe webriding. They try to sneak
up close to a rider, and then . . . .
Oh, groupies are necessary. Where else would we get our recruits?
But they have to be kept away from the riders, because it hurts too much, to lose someone you've grown close to. A double hurt for me, because I and my sister were once groupies ourselves. I am a rider now, but our tree lost us both. She, as like me as a holo image, is now atoms scattered across half a galaxy. I relive that loss with every would-be rider that dies- and so many of them do die.
Another price we pay. And they, the world-dwellers, try to make it up to us, forgetting that what's infinitely precious on one world may be common as oxy on another. Not that I could take any of it with me. What is desperately needed, I take in the thigh, or use the mouth carry. But for myself-never.
There are other rewards besides those which can be carried. In the crowd surrounding me, eagerly talking or humbly waiting for me to express my opinion, were at least four citizens obviously put there for me to choose from. An ultra brawn, one of the prettiest boychicks I'd ever seen, a super-swishious fem that eclipsed the medico by several orders of magnitude, and an adorable nymphet. All choice, but by this world's standards. Which meant, short, broad, tailless, blue-tinted skin, and pale, almost colorless hair that grew in little tufts over every bit of exposed skin I could see-plenty!-except around eyes and mouths. I'd seen weirder, lots, and I probably looked just as odd to them, if not odder.
I'm a straight fem, myself, and the brawn seemed well endowed with what a brawn should have-his costume left little to my fertile imagination-so I wasted no time in putting a possessive hand on his arm and asking him to stick around, while I politely implied to the other three
that if that was the way my tastes went, they'd certainly have been my choice.
The nymphet pouted, but the brawn was looking me up and down in a very unprofessional way, part smugness at being chosen, but mostly yum-yum! I'm gonna enjoy this!
I was no little complimented.
Mother Leaf, how that crowd around me talked and talked. A rider needs two things to restore physical/psychic energy after a ride, and I'd only had one. When my knees began to buckle, I let them. He caught me easily, and lifted me into a comfortable baby-carry, though I was a head taller than he. I wrapped my tail around his waist.
"Medico Alnasr," he called, voice shot through with worry.
"You," I said, and smiled. He got the message, prehensile tails have their uses, after all. He strode through the mob, my weight nothing, like a feeding black hole through a galaxy's heart. Which suited me just fine.
There was one odd incident. A fem-older, if wrinkles and missing tufts of hair meant what such signs usually mean-caught sight of my brawn's face and her own went pure blue. "Malachi," she hissed, but my brawn never missed stride. I shrugged mentally; relative, lover, or whatever, she'd have him back as soon as I left.
All my energies were most satisfactorily restored.
He was a pleasant conversationalist, too, easily talking about his exotic-to me-world of shallow seas and endless island chains. Not his fault, either, when a careless mention of his own family, his own sister, reminded me once again of the one I had lost. Sensing my inner withdrawal, he laughed and changed the subject, refusing to let me brood over a childhood spent in the crests of giant trees and a lost more-than-sister. Still talking, he led me out onto a transparent floored balcony, cantilevered over
a crystal water lagoon, filled with living rainbows darting through equally living though grotesque mazes.
His name was (he had quickly confirmed this) Malachi; and I sensed his curiosity growing about mine. I would have told him freely, except-
I have no name.
A twig may not choose a name until he/she has pollinated or budded. (Old habits die hard; we give birth as any other humans, except always clutches of identicals. But we identify with our trees. For example-) I am-or was -a twig of the tree called Tamarisk, of the 243rd generation born under Her shading leaves. But I was unbudded when I came to the web-too young-and unbudded I must stay until I die, or am thrown off the web for whatever reason, which is almost the same things. A budding fem can't ride, and I am a rider, I must ride.
On the rolls of the web I am carried as "Twig Tamarisk of Sequoia Upper." But that is for others' convenience. I have never chosen a name for myself, now I never will.
I told him to call me "Twig" and he looked me up and down and stifled laughter. I supposed to one as broad as he, I did look like a walking twig.
He gestured upward, that I might admire the gauzy dayring while he controlled his face. There was a rustle behind us; I caught my lip. We were supposed to be alone, but there are fanatics on many worlds. Twisted minds. Haters, who strike out at the handiest-or most prominent - targets.
I said nothing. Malachi could have been in on it, whatever it was. I simply moved a little away, as though to follow better Malachi's pointing finger. Until he heard the sounds, too-
The intruder hadn't a chance. Unarmed, the unfilled muscles and flesh of a youthful growth spurt, he was surprised by Malachi's savage attack.
In seconds, Malachi had his opponent face down on the deck, hands caught behind his back, and was looking about for something to tie his wrists together with. The stranger squirmed desperately but futilely, until he managed to twist his head around so that his gaze met mine, his face younger even than the still growing body, bluerimmed eyes rawly swollen, the irises scarcely darker than the blue-tinted whites. "Webrider, please," he begged.
I knew the look in those eyes, all webriders see it over and over.
"Let him up, Malachi."
"But he shouldn't be here. He may have come to attack-" Which showed that some on this world had heard certain tales, too.
"No, Malachi, he's a groupie. Aren't you, bud?"
Sullenly. "I don't know what a groupie is."
"Do you want to ride the web yourself-or just hear about other worlds and webriding?"