"David Feintuch - Seafort 07 - Chilren of Hope" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feintuch David)

when Galactic foundered, he’d been aboard, at the behest of his frazball friend Nick Seafort. They
say Dad died of decompression. Sometimes, when I couldn’t help myself, I imagined what he’d
looked like, afterward.
I flopped on my bed, pulled on my socks. “Sorry.”
“So am I.”
“You didn’t do anything.” And I shouldn’t have attacked him. But in my dream Dad’s smile had
been so close, his voice so warm . . .
“I’m sorry he died,” said Kevin.
“You never knew him.”
“I didn’t have to. I know you.”
I took a long breath, and another, at last truly ashamed. “Did I hurt you?”
“A bit.” He rubbed a red mark on his temple. A fist-sized mark.
I stared glumly at the new day. “Three more weeks.”
“The summer went fast.” Kev, a city joey from Centraltown, was a summer intern, sent to the
Plantation Zone on a government program I’d thought nonsense, until I’d met him. He’d taken to
life on Carr Plantation like a fish to water, though I’d had to teach him nearly everything.
I gathered my courage. “I’ll really miss you.”
“Jeez, thanks.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll tell Anthony you’re on your way.”
“Fast as I can.”
Kev’s footsteps faded down the stairs.
I climbed into my pants. The Balden Reservoir would be dedicated today, and the massive
force-field damming Balden River switched on. Water would soon accumulate behind it, freeing
our plantations forever from dependence on rain or irrigation pumps. I sighed. I supposed I ought
to be interested. Hell, I was interested. If only Kev hadn’t interrupted my dream.
I’d have to wash, or face Anth’s reproof. Gradually, in the last year, my grown nephew had taken
charge, as Mom slipped more and more into her religious zeal and Sublime-induced
chemdreams. In her better weeks, she was active in the Sisters of Faith Cathedral Auxiliary, to
Anth’s discomfort.
I ducked into the bathroom, studied my face, yearning for the first signs of fuzz. Damn it, I was
already thirteen. What was my body waiting for?

Staring sullenly at the sluggish stream, I shrugged off Anthony’s consoling hand.
“Because I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my
chosen.” Why must old Henrod Andori go on so? The Plantation Zone had no desert, and the
Balden Valley was hardly a wilderness. Hell, our manse itself sat at the lower end of the valley,
and look at the green of our lawns. All right, the valley had no power grids, and its only road was a
rough trail, but . . . “These people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.” The
gaunt Archbishop eyed us, bent anew to his text. I rolled my eyes.
The reservoir would be quite something, despite old Andori’s blather. It had been Dad’s idea,
originally. Hope Nation had water to spare, but the plantations that were our mainstay—like Carr,
our home—were slaves to rainfall and the water table. We had three choices: atmospheric
diversion via shifting solar shields, desalinization, or a dam.
Andori scrolled his holovid to a new chapter. I nudged Anthony. “No more! Make him stop.”
“I can’t.” Anth’s lips barely moved.
“What’s the point of being Stadholder if you can’t—”
“Shush. Scanlen’s watching.”
“So?” But I subsided nonetheless. The Bishop of Centraltown was a powerful figure in his own
right, and Andori’s deputy in the hierarchy of the Reunification Church. Mother Church ran
Centraltown, and to all intents and purposes, Hope Nation.
I frowned at the Balden River. Not much of a river at summer’s end, but by spring it would be a