"David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 2 - Cross The Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Slade was past his first youth, but he had no inclination to have become inactive. He had seen too many line officers leave a tank turret for a desk and go to seed with appalling suddenness. Slade's build would permit that if he let it, the great ropes of muscle growing marbled with fat, the hard belly beginning to sag to match the wobbling buttocks. The tan of Terzia's sun had faded somewhat during the voyage, but improvised exercise had kept up the muscle tone of his big body. Sare's estimate of his weight was short by five kilos, perhaps because so much of Slade's bulk was dense muscle.
Also . . . early in his service with the Slammers, before a former nickname had resurfaced, Slade had been known as "Tripod." He knew quite well that in love-making, as in any other craft, the workman's skill is more important than his tool. From the way their eyes flickered to Slade's groin, it seemed that these girls were not aware of that as yet.
"Well, I think we'd better get back," Risa said. "If you wouldn't mind, sir, we'll trim better if you sit sideways in the luggage space instead of in the other seat. I'm afraid you'll have to put your knees up."
Risa was leading the way to the open car. She stretched back an index finger as if to draw Slade physically along. The other three girls scattered at once to their own vehicles. All of them were landed neatly beside the collapsed parachute. The chute's monomolecular fabric should have been of interest to locals who seemed to wear no synthetics. The girls scampered over the canopy without a glance down, and Slade knew enough to doubt their disinterest stemmed from ignorance.
The hull of Risa's car was molded in pastel swirls. The pattern was not quite garish up close, and at any distance it would mute into a blur more natural than any equal expanse of a solid color could be. The meadow's vegetation was more varied than the screens could suggest, but only an occasional stalk was more than a meter high. There were no thorns to jab Slade's legs or bare feet.
The car was little more than two seats and, behind them, a cargo space narrow enough to be a strait fit for Slade's chest sideways. "Lord and Martyrs," he exclaimed as he seated himself gingerly. "You dived this at two hundred kays?"
"We had to," said Risa, hopping into the driver's seat. "Nobody else was anywhere around, and we couldn't just let you fall."
The car staggered a little on a sliding lift-off, but its fans had a surprising amount of power for an open vehicle. Risa trimmed them manually at three meters, then slipped upward to ten where there was a better view of the rolling landscape.
The planet was not entirely open meadow as Slade's subconscious had been trying to convince him. Mountains were now visible astern in the near distance, and the broad band of darker green to the left was surely a forest fringing a watercourse. In addition, mixed herds of animals, none of them familiar to Slade, cropped the vegetation. Occasionally, the whine of fan blades or the shadow of one of the cars flitting above would spook a whole section of the plain. Hundreds of beasts, the largest species up to half the size of the lifeboat, would rush off across the sward like dark surf. They showed no signs of being domesticated.
It was a matter of increasing concern to Slade that, apart from the cars, there were no signs of civilization at all.
"You settled here recently?" he asked. That would explain both the low population and the Terzia's remark about the planet being uncharted.
The car was traveling at fifty kph or less, so wind noise was no impediment to normal speech. Risa glanced back at her passenger and gave him a broad smile. "We've been here longer than you might think," she said. "But if you mean Elysium doesn't show-signs of much development, well, that's true. Our ancestors picked this world to settle because it seemed to them a paradise, a-" she dimpled- "an Elysium. They were determined to keep it that way, and every generation since then has agreed. There aren't many of us on Elysium-that's part of why the planet has stayed, well . . ." She took her left hand from the controls to gesture in an evocative semi-circle. "But we're happy with our world and happy with our lives, almost all of us."
Slade nodded and tried to keep the questions behind his eyes. Early migrant ships did not pick and choose planets. They had drives which frequently failed, leaving them between stars with no way to re-enter Transit space, or-and this could only be surmised because it left only negative evidence in the human universe-stranded them forever in Transit, in an envelope crushed slowly inward by a palpable grayness.
Risa either read or deduced the doubt in the castaway's mind. "Our ancestors were slow-ship colonists," she said. "That wasn't working for many reasons, so they found a way to escape from their vessel. But I guess it'd be better if you heard the details of all that from my parents."
"This seems a very lovely world," Slade said carefully, "and a very peaceful one." He did not know whether the girl was lying to him or if she were merely retailing the lie which had been told her in the guise of history. That was not important, but it was crucial for Slade to learn enough of the present situation for him to tailor his own lies to meet it. He was a lone traveler, and his hopes of getting home depended on the impression he made on the people he was about to meet.
"Oh, very much so," Risa agreed with another bright smile. "That's the main reason we don't mix very much with other, well, cultures. There'd be problems-sometimes not even everybody here on Elysium agrees about what to do or how. If we opened ourselves to the rest of the galaxy, some of the problems might become violent. Avoiding violence was very important to our ancestors, and to us."
"Well," said Don Slade, "a merchant like me who's bounced around on a lot of planets sees violence, I'm afraid. And I can only respect the way you folk have managed to avoid it." There was, Slade realized, as much truth to that statement as not.
Risa had not called her base, home, whatever, so far as Slade could tell. He had noticed that the girls in the accompanying cars were speaking. Though there were no microphones evident, it was obvious that they were reporting to someone. Six or eight kilometers ahead, on the shore of a lake that reflected the clouds above it, was a settlement of a few hundred houses and a probable public building or two. None of the structures looked particularly impressive, though that opinion might be affected by distance and the way the walls managed to blend with their surroundings. "This is the nearest town, then?" Slade asked.
"This is the town," Risa said, "though we call it the city." For a moment the girl's smile was replaced by something gentle but wistful. "We've seen real cities, you know," she said. "But none of us have visited one."
Risa touched a plate in the dashboard. It glowed green, reassuring her about the state of the power-pack. The car's instrumentation was unobtrusive but very slick, certainly nothing some farmer had cobbled together during a long winter. "This isn't everyone," the girl said. "Lot of families like to live alone or with just a few neighbors. But there aren't very many of us, as I said."
"Well, the . . ." Slade said, frowning now in open puzzlement. "These air cars. They are made on Elysium, aren't they? Or do you-?"
"Oh, the machinery!" Risa said delightedly. "Oh, my goodness, you thought you'd see that! All of that is underground, right here, most of it, under the houses and some distance beyond, I believe. I'm sure they'll show it to you if you'd like, but it isn't the sort of thing we-on Elysium-wanted in the open. My goodness," she repeated, her laughter bubbling into the sky as an image occurred to her. "You must have thought you were on a planet where you'd have to grow a long white beard and learn to card wool. Really, I'm sure my parents can help you get home."
"Risa," said some undifferentiated part of the dashboard in a bass voice, "why don't you bring our guest by the house first. We have some clothes for him. After he's had a chance to bathe and change, your mother and I will walk him over to the Hall for dinner."
"All right, Dad," the girl replied. Slade could not see how she was keying the mike, but there could have been a button on the control stick. Risa made a moue over her shoulder at the man. "I hope you like red," she said. "Kelwin dearly loves it, and I doubt anyone else in town has clothes to lend that might fit you. Not that you're as heavy as Kel. . . ."
People were standing on porches or against vine-covered fences, watching the car approach. The individual yards were separated by walkways, but there did not seem to be any provision for ground vehicles. That was not completely inexplicable, but the only air cars Slade had seen were the quartet that had rescued him. Additional transport should have been parked in the yards, even if none of it happened to be airborn at the moment.
Then Risa guided her vehicle-a trifle too fast at first, because she was unused to compensating for Slade's considerable mass-around a house of weathered stone. An older man and woman waved from where they stood, well clear of the opened back wall. Risa tilted the fans forward to balance momentum with their thrust. Then she drove neatly into the building and parked beside two very similar cars.
The garage was well lighted. Slade had expected the floor and walls to be stone or concrete. It was with a sense of surprise that he realized these were some synthetic which glowed without any external light source.
The older couple had walked in as Risa shut the fans down. They could have passed as Slade's age or less, but the castaway's instinct was that they were much older. The man had Risa's hair and features, while the woman was nearly blond and somewhat less fine-drawn. Both smiled warmly at the girl and her passenger. "I'm Nan," said the woman as she stretched out a hand to Slade, "Risa's mother; and this is my husband Onander. I'm sure our daughter has welcomed you to Elysium, but let me assure you that the welcome was from the whole community."
The hull and seat-back flexed beneath Slade's weight when he levered himself out of the space in which he had ridden. He touched Nan's hand as he stepped from the vehicle, though he was careful not to put any strain on her. "Lady," he said, conscious of his image but able nonetheless to be sincere, "your daughter and her friends saved my life. I can't think of any welcome better than that one. And if there's any way you might help me get home, the way the Terzia thought you might, I-well, how could I owe you for more than my life? But I would appreciate it."
"Of course we'll help you," said Onander. He clasped the bigger man, hand to biceps, in a gesture that brought their left wrists together as if they were mingling blood. "But I hope you'll accept a night of our hospitality here. We dare allow few visitors, but someone the Terzia recommended is welcome not only as a guest but also as a font to slake our curiosity. But you will-" he glanced down at Slade's garment with a smile and not censure-"be more comfortable in proper clothes, won't you? They're right upstairs in the bathroom."
Nan and Onander were already leading the way around the parked cars to the staircase in a corner. The outside door had pivoted shut unnoticed. That was the sort of effortless control to be expected in a room with smoothly-gleaming surfaces; but the stairs took Slade aback again. They were of dark wood, old enough to show wear in the gentle bowing of the treads. Each tread was pegged, not nailed or glued, to the stringers. The fit appeared flawless.
"Via, this is a fine piece of work," Slade said aloud as he let his fingers brush the balustrade. He felt that he had to be as careful with it as he had been with his hostess, though the dense wood barely flexed beneath his foot. It struck him that the Elysians themselves might be less fragile than his nervousness seemed to be warning him.
Nan glanced back at the big man. "My mother's mother built it," she said. "To replace the extruded one. I'm told that it was almost six years before she called it finished-not that she was working on it full time."
Nan paused at the stair head and rapped the balustrade. The sound had a life that masonry or synthetics would not have duplicated. "They were both, this and the plastic, utilitarian in that they permitted people to walk between the garage and the first floor," the woman continued. "But this had a utility for my grandmother while she was working on it, too . . . and for us, to remember her every time a step sounds on the tread."
As he mounted the last step himself, Slade glanced over his shoulder and smiled. Risa still waited at the foot of the stairs, watching the play of the castaway's muscles. When his eyes caught hers, the girl blushed before she grinned back.

CHAPTER TEN
"The seat of honor, Mister Slade," Onander said as he pointed to the chair at the center of the cross table. The chair to either side of the central one was empty also. Nan took the guest's hand lightly to bring him forward, much as her daughter had led Slade to the car.
There were about thirty adults already sitting at the two side tables and at the seats to either end of the table that crossed them into a square-based U. They clapped lightly as the castaway entered the room. There were decanters and covered dishes on the tables, but the meal had waited for Slade's arrival.
Slade's tunic and shorts were red, as he had been warned. The garments were comfortably light in the warm evening, and they were loose enough to give him occasional twinges as he remembered his garb on landing. Other Elysians were wearing similar clothing, though mostly of printed cloth. There was no certain cut or style. One man was nude at least from the tabletop to his cap of iridescent feathers.
Nan sat in one of the flanking chairs. Onander pulled out the central one and gestured Slade into it. Before the Elysian himself sat down, however, he called, "Friends? Our guest would probably be better for a meal in him. Afterwards, we hope he'll join us in the other room and tell us something about himself and the things he's seen; but for now, let's all eat in peace."
There was another patter of hands beneath a rainbow of Elysian smiles.
The Slammers were normally fed with ration packs, standardized food. It might once have had a Dutch emphasis, but when reconstituted it tended to be as featureless as a hooker's thirtieth trick of the night. The mercenary troops themselves came from worlds as varied as those on which a contract might station them. It was better to accept the cost and inconvenience of standardized rations than to lose thirty percent of your effectives to diarrhea or constipation every time you shifted planets.
Slade, however, had made a practice of eating on the local economy wherever possible. He hadn't joined Hammer to be bored, and he'd always figured he pulled his weight even when he had the runs. The big man therefore appreciated the meal before him as few of his fellows would have been able to do.
Not that the food was exotic in any normal sense. There was roast meat, vegetables both raw and cooked-nothing Slade recognized, and nothing particularly striking except a dish that looked like cole slaw and tasted like napalm-and bread, which was almost certainly baked from Terran wheat. The wine was probably better than Slade had a palate to enjoy. He had grown up on Tethys with stim cones, not alcohol. His introduction to the latter as a low-ranking trooper had been regimental stash, valued for reasons apart from its piquant subtleties of flavor.
"You know," he said around a bite of roast-from the end, where it was cooked gray, not pink-"I sort of thought you might be vegetarians. It, well, I thought you might."
"Some of us are," Onander said as he forked more meat from the tray between the two men. "Down at the far end," he noted, with a gesture toward one of the side tables, brief enough to be unobtrusive. "We haven't a large population on Elysium, but neither is it a monolithic one. You wouldn't prefer, ah, vegetable protein, would you? Really, I should have checked."
Slade had not been conscious of being the center of attention. The other people in the hall had been eating and chatting in normal fashion. Now, however, the big wood-paneled room had noticeably stilled. "Oh, not at all," the castaway said in embarrassment. "It's mostly seafood of one sort or another . . . a lot of it compressed and textured plankton, but animals to start out even if they were little ones."
He grinned and looked around the room. "Tell the truth, a lot of what I was raised to eat was about as bland as regimental food." He raised a bite of roast on his fork. "Nothing as good as this," he closed, putting an obvious period to the explanation by eating the morsel.
Slade had not done any physical labor since his last bout of exercise on the lifeboat. The tension of the landing, however, had itself kept his metabolism cooking at a high rate. He plowed on through repeated servings, vaguely conscious without focusing on it that those around him continued to eat though at a much lower rate. When Slade finished, covering a belch with his hand, there was almost simultaneous movement among his hosts to push their plates away and lean back.