"Elgin,.Suzette.Haden.-.Star.Anchored.Star.Angered" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

"Oh yes," he said. "Yes, indeed. And I could do with some more information. Did the Dean tell you where Citizen Silver is, if she's not on Freeway? Or has she ascended to the skies, to fall to earth we know not where ... or something." He was overtired. He was definitely overtired.
"She has gone, I understand, with a group of Shavvies, on a missionary expedition to Galoralon."
"Oh, no." Coyote leaned back against the hood of the bench and closed his eyes.
"I know how you must feel," said the Student softly.
"No, you don't."
"I do," he insisted. "Everybody knows about Galoralon."
Coyote opened his eyes. "Why," he asked, "why would she want to go there, on a missionary or any other kind of expedition? Can you tell me that? It's the nether asshole of the universe, Galoralon. It's the Pesthole Expert's Pesthole. Even the bugs on Galoralon wish they could leave ... not to mention the slime molds."
"Perhaps she felt that the people of Galoralon really needed her help, Citizen."
"Perhaps. Perhaps she is mad, as well as a fake." He closed his eyes again, and contemplated the blackness there, shot now and again by a gloating little yellow thing that slid across his eyeball and out of sight.
"Is she a fake, Citizen Jones?"
Coyote's eyes snapped open, and he glared at the Student.
"Well of course she is," he said crossly. "That's a ridiculous question."
"Well," said the Student, "Dean O'Halloran does not agree that she is a fake."
Oops. A small warning bell managed to get past the fog in Coyote's mind and recall to his attention the fact that one does not—repeat does not—attempt to alter the special kind of trust a Student usually has for Deans. It was just that Citizen O'Halloran had seemed so spectacularly pragmatic.
"Dean O'Halloran," he said musingly, watching the Student's face, "is a fine, intelligent woman. A bit behind on her cosmetic injections, perhaps, a bit too eager to race up and down halls and in and out the windows, but a fine, intelligent woman nonetheless. Not the sort to be taken in by a bag of cheap psi-tricks."
The Student's face assumed the thunderclouded aspect he was anticipating, and Coyote stood up immediately, obliging the young man to occupy himself in keeping the plastibench from falling over with him.
"Do you suppose I can get a visa for Galoralon?" Coyote asked, changing the subject.
The Student snickered. "I expect they pay people to visit Galoralon," he said. "I'll bet you can get visas for Galoralon out of the comsets, Citizen."
He turned out to be right. The official only grinned when asked about the visa, whipped out a stamp whose shining condition showed the rareness of its use, stamped Coyote's unipass with a resounding thwack, and stood there smirking at him.
"Have a pleasant visit," said the official, and Coyote smirked back.
"May your mother's breasts fall off," he said pleasantly.
He retrieved his luggage from the ejectislot in the far wall, disentangled himself from the Student, and went to the nearest hertz to rent a flyer. He was through with commercial flights, and the Service could bloody well pick up the tab for the rental. Enough was enough.
"You're leaving at once, Citizen?" carolled the rental robot.
"Certainly not," snapped Coyote. "I am going to a good hostel. I am going to have the most expensive dinner obtainable on Phoenix-One. I am going to buy six bottles of the best beer this place has got. And then I am going to sleep for twelve hours. And then I am going to Galoralon."
"How long," asked the robot primly, "will this program take, Citizen?"
"Have the flyer fueled and ready to go at ten o'clock tomorrow morning," Coyote said. "After breakfast. A leisurely breakfast."
"Very good, Citizen Student."
Very good, Citizen Student? And just who had paid for the fancy programming that enabled this machine to recognize him as a Student? Waste! Conspicuous waste! Coyote restrained, the impulse to kick its pedestal, and contented himself with patting it on its little pointed head.

WELCOME TO GALORALON! said the sign.
In letters sixteen feet tall. They were not, unfortunately, either tall enough or thick enough to hide the view, which went on forever. Flat. Flat as Kanzas, as the saying went. Everything was pale green as far as the eye could see, and that was incredibly far. Sinkholes and potholes and an occasional drainage ditch. Pale green thickets and pale green trees, from which dangled pale green vines and pale green snakes. Over pale green mud, through which bubbles rose from time to time with a soft pop. And none of this green was the pale green of tender April buds, either; it was a shade more properly associated with medical textbooks.
Pheew.
Coyote landed the flyer on the pad, and congratulated himself when it didn't sink into the slime. They did not call Galoralon "The Swamp Planet'' as a joke; they had excellent reasons. It was almost all swamp, and where it was not swamp it was bare tundra with a kind of scruffy gray grass. It was the kind of place that matched a really bad hangover perfectly. It had four continents, each more revolting than the last, and a total population of just over eleven million miserable people. Most of them lived on the continent of Krausse, where a city of sorts had been built on tundra chunks and government-issue floaters, along with a small landing-port. The city, predictably, was called Krausseburg, and its entire complement of flat, boxy structures stretched away before Coyote's eyes, perched on stilts above the ground, for when the swamps rose in the fall.
They came out to meet him, which he had not expected, and there were five of them, also unexpected.
"Citizen Coyote Jones?" said one of them.
"Right," said Coyote, and before he could get out another word—to point out, for example, that his name had three syllables, not two—they had a restraining net over him.
"You are under arrest," said the short fat one who appeared to be in charge. Another one reached into the flyer and pulled out the satchel and the guitar case and took off with them in the general direction of the port building. The others poked him rudely in the back and shoulders.
"Move it!" they said in chorus.
Coyote set his feet firmly and stood as still as possible, since the net would tighten automatically in response to anything remotely like a struggle.
"Just a minute," he said. "You've made a mistake. I realize I'm somewhat ... unusually ... dressed, Citizens, but I am in fact a federal agent on a very important mission, and if you'll just let me get to my credentials—"
"Shut up, Citizen Jones," said the fat one. "We are quite aware that you are a TGIS man. You make a lousy Student."
"In that case—"
The man's voice rose to a shrill and ear-puncturing scream. "And we are sick and tired of the continual efforts of the Tri-Galactic Intelligence Service to interfere in the internal affairs of Galoralon!"
"But—"
"And we are aware, Citizen, that you come to stir up revolution among our nomadic peoples and cause them to rise against our benevolent government, which—the Light knows—has nothing but their best interests at heart."
"I just—"
The man shook a thick fist in Coyote's face and jerked at the restraining net until it tightened enough to satisfy him.
"Enough!" he screamed. "We have the evidence, Citizen Jones! We know what we are talking about! Enough!"
He snapped his fingers, there was a flicker of cold at the back of Coyote's neck, and everything went ... in the best secret-agent tradition ... black.
Everything Went Black.