"Thomas Easton - Organic Future 03 - Woodsman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

lab. It was a suburban backwater, half its units empty, the rest unobtrusive
in their telemarketing and direct mail and small-scale manufactures. There
were few signs, and fewer logo-marked cargo pods awaiting loading or
unloading. Most of the businesses here relied on rental Macks.

It was just the sort of place he had needed when...His thought paused
while he appreciated the blessing it was that the anti-gengineering forces had
not yet found this place. The government, through him, funded Duncan's
operation, but it was not an operation he wished the general public to know
about. Publicity could be fatal, both figuratively and literally.

The building he had just left was long, rounded, green, its windows
opaqued by vertically slatted blinds. The other buildings of the park were
just the same, a long file of similar buildings embedded in close-cropped
grass. Nowhere was there any trace of the honeysuckle that was doing its best
to inundate the landscape almost everywhere. Nor was there any trace of the
gengineered vines whose fruit had been dried and carved and fitted out to make
the bioform Quonset huts.

"Zucchinis!" muttered Renny with a disdainful sniff. "Let's get out of
here."

They had left the Armadon in one of the many empty slots in the turved
parking lot. Now they stepped to the vehicle's front, where Frederick patted
its neck and made sure it had had no trouble reaching the water that flowed
through the broad gutter before it. Nearby, the heads of a few other bioform
vehicles--other Armadons, Tortoises and Beetles, and the ever-present
Roachsters--hovered watchfully over the water, waiting for them to leave
before returning to their drinking. In the distance, a pair of litterbugs,
scoop-jawed descendants of pigs, wandered desultorily about the parking lot as
they sought the waste material that it was their mission to remove. Overhead,
a wide-bodied Goose carried a pod of passengers toward some distant city. Near
the southern horizon, a thick contrail marked the track of a space plane bound
for orbit.

Frederick opened the Armadon's door. The dog leaped past him to the seat.
The man shook his head, climbed in, and turned on the turbochargers mounted in
the genimal's throat. Their whine quickly rose in pitch until it became
inaudible, and soon...For a few blessed hours, he had escaped the office, the
honeysuckle, the government that employed him and his thousands of fellows.
But such escapes could never last.

Unless...Some people did escape. As the Armadon left the industrial park
behind, the honeysuckle vines began to appear, covering the banks beside the
greenways, wreathing trees, wrapping the walls of buildings. Among the vines,
on curbs and benches and steps, sheltered by overpasses and walkways,
honey-bums passed the waiting hours until they felt again the craving for the
euphoric wine the vines collected in their giant blossoms. Buried here and
there in the greenery were the living statues, smooth-barked, green-leaved,
silent, that the honey-bums became if they lingered too long on open soil.