"Duncan, Dave - Strings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

Frazer's iniinit@_Iy spunious face wore an expression that could only be classed as Pontifical Infallibility. "The news conference. It's set for noon. I plan to attend, of course."
Ice won in a landslide. Pandora's hand found the back of a
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chrome and cryspex chair, and she deflated onto it. "What news conference?"
For a tiny fraction of a second authentic emotion showed in Frazer's eyes. It was very nasty. Then blandness returned. "Oh ' had you not heard?" "Heard what, Frankie?" "The director herself! Old Mother Hubbard's invited the media to a reception. Her first news conference in twenty years. I confess I am curious to hear what the old coot has to say."
Klaus might arrive before noon, but there was no hope on Earth that Pandora could have the story ready to spin before then. All she could do was to follow news of the press conference with a stock "usually reliable sources believe that she will report. . ."
Ten million hectos, and Pandora had bought a couple of hours' rumor-which the other networks would steal away from her at once.
There could be no doubt why Hubbard had called a press conference. Pandora had already researched the figures and knew them by heart. In thirty years 4-1 had contacted over fifty thousand worlds. About fifteen hundred had bome life of some form or other, but none had proved in the end to he human habitable. Nor had the Institute turned up any trace of sentience-until that stone ax. Only one of those two possible discoveries could justify a public announcement by the old woman herself, and they could hardly both happen in the same week, not after thirty years.
Scuppered! Double-cross? How had the Institute known that WSHB knew? "Do you want to come along with me, Panda dear?" Frazer Franklin asked, drooling syrup. "Or will you be laboring to deliver your billion-dollar baby?"
Nauc, April 7
"GimmE YOUR WATCH!" "Huh?"
The chopper was still heading s(yLitheast with its sinister escort swooping around high overhead. Despite a hollow-eyed shortage of sleep, Cedric had been staring out the window with steadily growing excitement. Holos gave sight and sound, but reality was so much more-smells and vibration and the sense of motion. He marveled at the greenness of grass and leaves below the gray drizzle; it made Meadowdale seem like a desert. He had just registered that there, was no new building in progress here, The towns were not abandoned, but they had a seedy, neglected look to them, so probably they did not have long to go. Then he had catight a whiff of an unfamiliar scent and decided that must be the sea. "You heard rne. dummy. Your watch." @he thick man had been brooding in silence for a long time and was glovvering at Cedric's wrist.
Puzzled and distrustful, Cedric unclipped his watch and passed it over. Bagshaw put both thumbs on it and squeezed, setting his teeth with effort. The watch bent and split, and then spilled parts. Ignoring Cedric's yell of complaint, Bagshaw tossed it into a comer. "What the hell. mister? Gran sent me that for my-2'
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The bull grunted. "Babysitter." Cedric's fair skin tended to flush easily. He felt it do so now. Three times in the last year he had gone over the screens at Meadowdale -small wonder that his freedom had always been so short-lived. "Tracer? That was how you found me last night?"
Hooded eyes gleamed mockingly. "No. IT do my own babysit, tina. "
Cedric worked that out and it was even worse. He had behaved exactly as expected-likely they had not even had to call on System for a psychoplot. Sucker! How could he have been so stupid? He felt like a circus animal. He was going to meet his grandmother face to face at last, and now he wondered how he would hold up his head.
So full of shame that he could taste it, he went back to watching the landscape unrolling below, but the magic had gone clammy and sour. Sucker! Sucker! Sucker!
But if he had not ruined everything, what did Gran have planned for him? She had refused to be specific on the corn, saying only that there was a job waiting. Rangers must need a long training program, and she had not mentioned training.
Bagshaw had gone back to his brooding, staring malevolently at the shimmer of oil rainbows in a dished floor panel.
Now the land was stark and wasted. The farthest reach of storm tides was marked by long ridges of debris, the remains of buildings and machinery. Cedric reminded himself that those had been people's homes, people's cars and possessions, hopes and dreams. Tree trunks, shattered asphalt, concrete rubble-those told of other damage. In places the piled refuse still smoked. He knew it was fired as soon as it dried out, because it always contained animal carp-asses. Or worse. Every storm moved the ridges farther inland. . . and storms were still growing more frequent.
The desolation became worse-barren, salt-soaked flats where nothing grew. Lonely concrete mins stood in forlorn de-
ance between oddly rectangular patches of swamp marking choked cellars. In places the ground had been stripped to bare bedrock. "Why are we coming here?" Cedric demanded suspiciously. This could certainly not be the way to Headquarters.
Bagshaw roused himself ftom his scowling reverie and ges-
y tured idl northward. "Earthfirsters have a rnissile post thereabouts. Easier just to go around it."
Cedric gaped at him, trying to decide if Bagshaw was stringinp him n1ong- "Th@,.v'd zhont it mzT`
"At anything going in or coming out." "They can get away with that?" "Sure they can-until we get mad enough to send in gunships
and bum their nest. Then they open up another. Crazy boneheads!"
Cedric swallowed his last crumb of pride. "Last night there was no fog on the holo. I saw things I'd never seen done before. I mean like sex. And the news had no foggy bits, either."
Bagsha-vv glanced at him and just nodded. Then he went back to staring at the floor, a hummock in a blanket. "They censored our holo? Why?"
The blanket moved in a shrug. "Kids are easier to handle if you keep their rninds off that stuff. Especially big kids."
Cedric clung tight to his new humility. "But the news? I never knew that Earthfirsters besieged the Institute. I've almost never heard of Earthfirsters."
Bagshaw gave him a curiously opaque stare. "There's probably a lot of things you don't know, Sprout." "Like, what?" "It'd be quicker to list what you do know. Did they teach you anything other than skeet lasering?" "Lots of things. Like farming and riding ... canoeing and woodsmanship. Like rock climbing." "You still got forests out west? ' "Some. In the drier parts. Desert trees resist UN@ they say. The rain doesn't hurt alkali soils as bad." "Not like forests used to be, I'll bet." Bagshaw scratched himself. "What good is all this outdoorsy stuff going to be to you' You going to be a cowboy when all the grass has died? More and more food has to be. synthetic." "I want to be a ranger," Cedric began, and wished he had not when he saw Baeshaw's lip twist. "Ranger? Ra@gers don't go outdoors, sonny. They stay inside their skivs. Been watching too many holos. you have. Stone of the Institute? Or maybe Ranger Stone and the Killer Cheese. 'You will thrill as fearless Stone CraiLy battles the-"' "Awright! What-"
But Bagshaw was enjoying himself. "You know what skii, means?" "Self-Contained Investigatory Vehicle." "So? Self-contained! No sane@ ranger leaves his skiv unless he must. He reads dials and keeps the equipment running and that's all."
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"Tell Devlin Grant that!" Cedric said hotly "Or Baker Abel! Or Jackson Wilbur!" "Okay. A few. But I know a lot o' rangers. Mostly they're a dull bunch. They're only cabbies for the big shots-the planetologists, geologists, and so on. The rangers spend most of their duty time lying around watching holo coins or playing craps. Believe me, I have that on good authority. Can you read?" "Of course!" But Cedric felt his face warm up again.
Bagshaw wrinkled his dermsym in wry amusement. "And write?" "Yes "Well, orjust so-so?" "Well! Well enough!" But Cedric knew he could not compare with Madge, say, or Ben, at reading and writing. He was much better than most of the kids at Meadowdale, though. No one had ever taught him. He had picked up reading from watching holo, and big words really bothered him. He could write his name and not much more, picking out the keys with one finger. He had always meant to start practicing in eamest, but somehow there had just never been time.
Bagshaw looked skeptical and laughed. ""Khat of it?" Cedric demanded, angry that the big man could so easily make him feel angry. "I saw a Frazer Frankie special last week that said half the Ph.D.s in the country can't read'n'write. " "Including that slime Frazer himself, I'd think."
Cedric turned back to the window. The copter was curving over the sea, a wide bay dotted with ruins. "Ranger's gotta be able to read, though," Bagshaw said, "because a skiv can't carry much of a System. Ranging's chicken work, Sprout. It's not exciting and dangerous; it's just dull and dangerous. Stay home and watch it on the holos-you'll see as much as they do from the skivs, anyway. And it's risky." "Yeah, but how risky?" Cedric was skeptical. "Really-how risky?" "About one party in fifty." "Bull!" "No bull. Not killer cheddar, just broken strings. Next window comes due, and the techs punch in the numbers, and there's nothing there, no world at those coordinates. It happens. Tough if you happen to be ovemighting!" "Maybe overrughting's risky," Cedric conceded. "But how
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often do they ovemight, though? Surely that's only done if a planet's really got something exciting?"
Bagshaw shrugged. "It's done a lot oftener than they let out. But even quickies can be dangerous. Suddenly there's instability-and if you don't get your ass back here real fast, the window may be gone. A;d that's it, Sprout! They never find a broken stving again. When a world's lost, it's lost. Creepin' rotten way to die."
Cedric was gazing out at the bay but not seeing much. He was thinking of p&-ents he could not remember. He always felt guilty about that, always felt that there should be something there, some vague baby memory of giant smiling faces. But there was nothing. "So maybe ranging isn't romantic," he said, and felt like a traitor as he did so. "But it's important! We've got to find a Class One world. Even if the worst of the troubles is over-" "What makes you say that?"
Holo did. Cedric had gotten his own set when Clyde left and he became eldest, and he had been watching all kinds of educational stuff. "The ozone's started to come ba,-k--2' "Wrong. The ozone's stopped getting less. That's Pot the same thing at all."