"Chalker, Jack L - Quintara 1 - The Demons at Rainbow Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)
"We didn't get the chance. I didn't have a timer on him, but he turned his damned power back on. It was dose -- real close.
A couple more minutes and we'd have had him. I pleaded with the others to help, but somebody yelled that the dust devils were coming back strong and they just backed off and left him there, and me digging alone -- more or less. I am never exactly alone. We were so damned dose\ I'm still convinced that even with them starting up again I could have gotten to him, and, if I had, the shuttle could have taken him with the grappler and hoisted him up out of range. I didn't want to quit, even with the devils starting to spit again, not with Almuda so loud in my suit that it was like we was touching helmets at full power. Grysta began yellin' and screamin' at me, but I would hear none of it, and I kept at it, and she finally gave me a series of painful shocks that stopped me dead, then shot my head full of fear and adrenalin. She was in control and I couldn't do anything except drop the shovel and run like hell."
The expression on his face was tense, his eyes wild, his voice filled with the emotion of that time, as if he were doing it all over again. Suddenly, he seemed to snap out of it and sank back into a relaxed posture in his chair.
"Almuda stopped talking to us about an hour after that, and I could only get brief fragments of his thoughts, which turned very dark. He just, well, gave up. I tried to argue with him, even screamed at him, but all he finally said was, 'Farewell, comrades, it has been an interesting life.' Then he shut down all systems, and, about one minute later, there was no doubt as to his location. One whole area of the huge dune just exploded outward. He'd put his energy pack on emergency overload. Killed himself."
In spite of his professed lack of faith, Jimmy McCray crossed himself.
"I do not see what else you could have done," the Durquist commented, trying to sound as sympathetic as possible. "Even if you had gotten to him, the grappler could only have taken one of you up. The creatures would have simply replaced your shipmate with you and there would have been the same problem with a different victim."
"That was Grysta's analysis, but she has a shipmate and crew of one other. Almuda was a good fellow, and he was my friend."
The Durquist was silent for a moment. "Urn, yes," it said at last. "But the rest of your team blamed you for this?"
"Yes, curse their miserable souls to the lowest Hell! Not me, really -- Grysta. They blamed Grysta. Did a lot of good what-ifs and decided that she'd killed Almuda by making me quit. Never mind the fact that the whole lily-livered lot of them had cut and run far ahead of me. That was the hardest thing to take of all. If I'd cut and run at the same time they had, we'd all have been - comrades in cowardice together. Because I had more guts than the lot of them, I alone got blamed for Almuda's death. Grysta and me, anyway."
"I see. If it was Grysta's fault, then it wasn't theirs. Create one, or two in this case, scapegoats and you absolve everyone else of blame and redirect guilt into anger. You were the only human on the team?"
"Yes. I've never actually worked with another human in a team operation, odd as it might sound."
"Not odd. I was just reflecting. The team's reaction seems like such a human filing to do. Never mind. These kinds of situations are rather common for us, I fear. I'm not certain I don't prefer your last world to our last one, where we lost our telepath. One can almost sympathize with your whirlwinds. An entire existence based upon sculpting forms out of rocks, in which the 'artists outnumber the desecrator by thousands. One wonders if they attacked your poor comrade as a violator of some serious religious law or if it was simply the case of artists murdering what they considered to be the first art critic. No matter, I don't think that this incident says anything bad about you. Indeed, it sounds like you're a better team member than the others. I wonder if -- "
At that moment the door slid open and Molly walked into the living room from outside. She spotted the Durquist immediately -- the creature was pretty hard to miss -- and stopped. Her eyebrows went up. "Sorry. Not know nobody here but Jimmy."
"That is quite all right," the Durquist responded pleasantly. Then, to Jimmy, it said, "We heard on the street how you were making ends meet, but I do not believe I am familiar with her kind. She looks human, in a way, yet animal as well."
Jimmy McCray sighed. "Okay, I guess it's time for my second sob story." And, with that, he told the Durquist all about how he'd rescued Molly and what had developed from it.
"That's why we're probably wasting your time," he concluded after giving the basics of the story. "When I took her I became responsible, and she's just not self-sufficient on her own. The only place she could exist without me would be down at the Club, and the Entertainers' Guild would never permit that. That
means, where I go, she goes. She's a broadcast empath, within a limited range, so she has some talent other than theobvious, but she's a lot more limited -- maybe programmed -- than would be useful in the dirt. As much as I'd like to go back to space, I can't just leave her here. I was forced to walk out on one person before and leave 'em to die. I can't do it again."
The Durquist thought it over. "We have an empath -- the company owner, in fact -- but she's not broadcast. Molly is basically human -- the little tail and the hooves wouldn't be much problem to allow for in a suit -- and rather small and light. But would she be loose equipment?"
Jimmy understood what the creature meant. "No. I've never seen a less aggressive person in my life, and she'll obey just about any command. About the only thing is, she's totally incapable of harming anything or anybody unless her empathic sense tells her that they want to be hurt."
"Well, the job we have in mind won't even involve a dirtfall, as such," the Durquist told him. "It is not risk-free, but it's not the kind of thing you had last time. About the only problem I can see with her is that she is programmed to provide human sexual favors."
"I see. And no humans on the team."
"On the contrary. The owner is a human female, in fact. And the man . . . well, that's the problem."
Jimmy McCray sat back and stared at the Durquist. "I've been pretty open with you. I think it's time you told me why so many turned you down, you had to come to me."
"Yes, I think so. Settle back and I'll go from the beginning. Bear with me, please, but, even if, at the end, you turn us down, I suspect you could sell the story to the entertainment business."
But when the payoff came, the trio had somewhat different reactions.
"A cymol! They made him a cymol!" Jimmy McCray was appalled. "You don't know what that does to a telepath, being around a cymol for any time. The playacting is good enough for most folks, but to a telepath it's like working with a corpse! No wonder nobody's interested!"
"Is very sad," Molly commented softly, and Jimmy was startled to see a real tear run down her cheek. "She do one dumb thing and make everybody sad."
"There may be parts in her that are yet undiscovered," the Durquist commented thoughtfully.
"Unfortunately, they're undiscoverable by any known means," McCray responded glumly. He thought it best not to relay Grysta's comment, and the Morgh didn't press for it.
The Durquist summed it up rather well. "Look, this particular job we have lined up is ticklish as hell, but without a telepath it's simply impossible. We're not even the first to try and crack this nut, but the profit potential is enormous, which is why the franchisees haven't sold or relinquished the option. It's quite possible that this job is impossible, but on the remote chance that it's not, nobody dares let others have access. It is also near enough to the Mycohl frontier that abandonment is out of the question. There's already been some evidence that the Mycohl have snuck in and had a crack at it themselves between expeditions. The nature of the thing is such that if they could crack it before us, it wouldn't matter if we had legal claims on it or not. It's never been tried with a cymol directing operations, though, and we think that gives us an advantage. There are very few cymols not directly working for the Exchange."
"But -- my God! Day to day with a cymol . . . And you said there'd be no dirt work, so it's entirely cooped up on shipboard." He shivered.
The Durquist moved to the humanoid position, as if it were going to leave. "Consider this, McCray. You can always be a procurer, but the freakish circumstances we both find ourselves in will almost certainly not occur again. If you want space again, you have to take all the terms and conditions and personnel we select. You have stones about your neck and you are sunk neck-deep in water. A dead man is holding out a stick and inviting you to grab it. I am now going to interview the last two potentials on my list. I shall take the first 'yes' I get, no matter what the baggage, because we are desperate. But if we get no affirmatives within the week, then we will cancel the contract. If you decide, call the Widowmaker Company at the northern civil spaceport. If we still have an opening, we will take you. I can waste no more time on this."
McCray sighed. "I just have to think it over, talk it over. Uh -- just out of curiosity, where did the ship's name come from?"
"The name was inherited with the purchase of the ship, I believe," the Durquist replied. "Before my time, really. I believe someone once said it referred to a domestic animal owned by some fictional character. One gets these bizarre names all the time, as you know, considering how much trouble it is to rename anything once it's registered. Good day."
As soon as the Durquist left, Jimmy began pacing, trying to decide in his own mind. To be cooped up in an old clunker of a spaceship with a cymol in command for who knew how long . . . And yet, it was space. It was a team again. It was, as the Durquist pointed out, his last and only chance, not only for his first and only true love, but to perhaps accomplish something, to keep from dry-rotting forever.
< Well? Are you going to take the job or not?>
"You don't have a preference?"
< Well, as the Durquist said, you can always be a procurer. And even I have to admit to being more than a little bored after only a few weeks. This life will kill you, Jimmy. I know that. But this is one I just can't call for you. >
"You don't know what it's like for a telepath to be around a cymol too much."
< No, I only know what it does to your blood pressure and other parts of your anatomy, and that's bad enough. That's why I won't make this decision. But, from this non-telepath's standpoint, it seems to me that if the choice is between working with a walking corpse and becoming a walking corpse, I know which one I would choose. >
"Logical as usual," he muttered.
"What is cymol?" Molly asked, curious. She was used to these one-sided muttered conversations by now, but felt no hesitation about listening in.
"A person who's had most of his brain replaced by a computer," he told her. "A machine in a dead man's body."
"A Syn?"
"No, not a Syn. This man was born normally, grew up like other men, had a life, but died young and a suicide, leaving his
body intact. So they used it and stuck in a son of brain of their own."
"He talk like machine?"
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