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

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very many, really. Not enough. A real man would know more bad words.
Bagshaw set him upright in the percy and flexed his arms as though they hurt. He bent over to view his feet. "Lookit that!" he said. "Cracked the sidewalk." "I'd Re to break it with your head." Cedric, tasting salt again, decided that he had bitten his tongue. "Angel should be along shortly. Let's go meet him." "And I'll have you know," Cedric said bitterly, "that I'm not virgo intacta."
Bagshaw drew in breath with a hiss. "Hot damn!" he said. "Tell me about it sometime."
Angel turned out to be a rackety Sikorsky of incredible antiquity. It set down right in a public square to pick up Cedric and Bagshaw, then took off again as calm as milk, woof.. . woof... woof into the dawn sky. It was only after they had cleared the tops of the nearby towers that someone opened fire. None of the occupants seemed very worried by that.
The interior was dark and empty and stank of oil. The pilot and his buddy jabbered into mikes and crouched over controls, with vague red lights flickering over their faces as though they were demons from the pit. Cedric's percy had been faid flat across the floor like a coffin, and Bagshaw helped him out of it. He was soaked, with his clothes clammy or, his skin, but it was only sweat-his pants were no wetter than his poncho. He sat on a bench and leaned back against an icy window and tried not to shake. He felt sick.
Something went by at high speed, and the helicopter rocked in its wake. The pilot made a joke, but Cedric thought that the other two did not find it funny. Then other fast things roared by, and those were apparently goodies, and everyone relaxed.
He was still clutching his little bag of coins. It was all he had left. It held sanity. It held his childhood. It held all his memories-of Christmas parties with Victor playing Santa Claus, of camping trips and rafting and hikes, and himself lasering. He had recorded most of the coins himself, with his own camera, but he had traded with the others, too. There were lots of his favorite shows and dramas in there also, but the commercial stuff was not really important. It was the personal stuff, the junk that no one else would care about-that was what mattered. The images might be out of focus, or the world tilted, or everyone unrecognizable under masks and o@oggles in the outdoor shots. So what?
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Dave Duncan
That was life. Now he had been pitched without warnina into a madness of death and terror. Sanity and happiness and love had disappeared from the world, and all he had to hang on to-all he had to remember them by-was that little bag of coins.
Then he realized that he was grieving for Meadowdale, and he felt ashamed. He was a man now, out in the world at last. That was what he had wanted, was it not? He was going to be a ranger like his father. He just had not expected the world, to get quite so rough quite so soon, that was all.
Bagshaw had stripped off his armor, down to his underwear. He was just as sweaty as Cedric, and he had pulled a blanket over his shoulders. From nowhere that Cedric could see, he produced two cans of beer.
Beer at that time of day? Cedric accepted one and drank greedily. The ranch hands had slipped him beer a few times, but he had never cared for the taste much. Until now. It went down good. How many people had died? The sky was still brightening slowly, and a fine rain was falling, smoking off the rotor edges. Towers and streets rolled by below. "You said. twelve stories." Cedric had not meant to talk, and he wondered why his mouth had spoken without warning him it was going to.
Bagshaw was not as sassy as he had been. He sat morosely on the bench, hunched under his blanket. He was immensely thick all over, like a weight lifter. Despite his globular belly, he probably carried more muscle than flab. The dermsyrn ended in a ragged edge at the top of his chest, yet as far as Cedric had been able to see, the man was completely hairless even where he had skin. "I said twelve for that make of percy. Mine is a bull suit. ney're better, but they do take practice." He drank, then wiped his lips. "I knew I could do forty-five meters in a bull suit. That wasn't much more than forty-five." "The hell it wasn't."
Bagshaw shrugged. "The tricky part was catching you. There's no routine for that."
Cedric shuddered convulsively. "No routine ... that was you?" Thick lips parted in a leer, "Just me-my eye. my judgment. Glad I got it right? You'd not have been very interesting after the first bounce." He held out his arms, which were turning bruise colors. "I never caught anything going quite that fast, though." The waldoes had not shielded him totally. "But you faked me!" Cedric said. "You slowed it down until I
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got to the window, and then you stopped it. I thought it wasn't going to happen. Then you went and did it to me anyway."
Bagshaw turned to study him for a moment. "I had to. First, I had to get ready. Second, a percy couldn't jump the ledge. If you'd hit the sill at speed, you'd have come out spinning, cartwheeling all over the sky."
Cedric grunted and looked away. The flight continued. The sky grew paler yet, sick-looking. They were flying over patchy woodland and gullies, for Nauc was a conglomeration of many cities, not yet continuous. Here and there Cedric noticed buildings being thrown up in haste. Despite the failing population, the whole world was in a building frenzy. "You never went over a hundred," Bagshaw said softly. "Huh?" "You've got a real slow heartbeat at the best of times, but even coming down the sky, it never went over one hundred. A guy could brag about that a little, I guess."
Cedric shivered in early morning chill and reaction. "How many deaths?" he asked. "How many died?" "I don't know. We didn't start it," "Just to kill me? Just to spite Gran and get on the evening news?"
Bagshaw shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they didn't even know who you were. Just knew there was a big force on their turf, thought they could scare us into surrendering. Then they'd have taken us apart and decided who we were and what
use we might be @ "
Cedric shivered again. "It wasn't your fault, lad." For a while Cedric just watched the condensation collecting or his beer can. He knew that Bagshaw was watchine him. "No, It wasn't my fault," he said finally. "You saying it was mine?"
Of course it was. Bagshaw had invaded enemy territory with an unnecessary show of strength. He had wasted endless time if, tauntini@ Cedric for his own amusement. He had told him to shave and shower when they should have been streaking out like scared trout. He had damned nearly advertised for trouble. "Who's going to ask?"
Bagshaw shrugged. "Just the Institute." "No cops? The city? State?" P-ch-ir I-AL-4 @t him nc thniivh h, @Prp trvina ni hP fimniv,
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Dave Duncan
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'Alou've got a patron! Probably the best there is! You*11 die of old age before any cop gets to lay a finger on you. That's what lawyers are for." "So a guy works for the Institute, he can get away with anything?" "Hell, no! The Institute sees to that itself."
Ah! "And who files the report on what happened tonight?" Without taking his veiled gaze off Cedric, Bagshaw tilted his head back, trying for a last drop of beer. Then he crumpled the can. "I do. You can file one, too, if you want." "Or countersign yours?"
Bagshaw began to look thoughtful. "You may get asked to ... this time." "I could offer?"
The bull head seemed to hunker down into the blanket, as though smelling a threat, and Cedric had a momentary vision of something massive pawing the ground. "You want to ask for a replacement?" "Would I get one?"
The reply was grudging. "You might." Cedric pushed harder. "After tonight, you mean?" Even more reluctantly. Bagshaw nodded. "After tonight. And if BEST files a complaint, then you will be asked for a report, I guess.
But if BEST complained, then the Institute would close ranks around its own-like little-boy gangs, like the bunkhouses at Meadowdale, each one a separate gang. This was the same, but bigger. And it was not little-boy stuff. It was death, caused by arrogance and rank stupidity.
Gangs had rules, and the first one was always loyalty. But loyalty was a dangerous emotion. It could be turned.
Cedric drained his beer can, too. "No. I'll sign yours," he said. "Your report. Put in all the lies you want. Say anything you need to cover your precious ass, any crap at all, I'll sign it for you, whatever you've said."
Bagshaw bared his teeth. After a minute he said. "'Y'ou can't back out once you sign," "I know that." Cedric returned his stare, not caring if he seemed petulant or unmanly, "Bastard!" Bagshaw said very softly. "Bad as your bitch of a grandmother."
Cedric felt a little better.
"Frigging young bastard! It must run in your bastard family!"
Whatever Bagshaw might make of the rest of his career, from that moment on he would always wonder if he owed his success to Hubbard Cedric Dickson. Nothing could ever hurt worse than that.
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Nauc, Api-il 7
DAwN WAS BREAKING, and Eccles Pandora Pendor had not been to bed at all. Negotiating, waiting for messages, wheedling and bullying, she had had a busy night. Even had there been a break, she would not have been able to sleep-not when she was poised on the lip of the biggest story in the history of investigative reporting. Hell, it was the biggest story in the history of the human race, and she was going to break it.
A stone ax with blood on it: Cave Men in Space. Finding that she fretted too much in her office, she had withdrawn instead to her retreat on the eightly-third Poor, to spend the night pacing and worrying.
Her apartment was a shimmering cavern of crystal and chrome, all angles and shiny white. The design was the latest and trendiest. To be honest. it gave her the pukes, but she redecorated every three months on principle, so this would soon he gone. Many a girl spent a fortune keeping her body youthful and then gave away her age by going for obsolete decor. Men detected discrepancies. Staving young was a total commitment.