"Foster, Alan Dean - Dream Done Green" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

Dream Done Green
that powerful, strange face was close to hers. One eye, she noticed offhandedly, was red, the other blue.
"Come with me now to the Meadows of Blood and I'll give you that piece of dream, that something few have had for thousands of years. I'll bring you back tonight and you can give me your answer on the way.
"If it's 'no,' then I'll depart quietly and you'll never see me again."
Now, in addition to being both beautiful and intelligent, Casperdan also had her sire's recklessness.
"All right... I'll come."
When her parents returned home that night from the party and found their daughter gone, they were not distressed. After all, she was quite independent and, heavens, to be married tomorrow! When they learned from Patch that she'd gone off, not with a man, but with a strange mal, they were only mildly concerned. Casperdan was quite capable of taking care of herself. Had they known where she'd gone, things would have been different.
So nothing happened till the morrow.
"Good morning, Cas," said her father.
"Good morning, dear," her mother added. They were eating breakfast on the balcony. "Did you sleep well last night, and where did you go?"
The voice that answered was distant with other thoughts.
"I didn't sleep at all, and I went into the Ravaged Mountains. And there's no need to get excited, Father" -- the old man sat back in his chair -- "because as you see, I'm back safely and in one piece."
"But not unaffected," her mother stated, noticing the strangeness in her daughter's eyes.
"No, Mother, not unaffected. There will be no wedding." Before that lovely woman could reply, Casperdan turned to her father. "Dad, I want the contract of Control. I intend to begin as director of the firm eight o'clock tomorrow morning. No, better make it noon ... I'll need some sleep." She was smil-
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ing faintly. "And I don't think I'm going to get any right now."
On that she was right. Dandavid, that usually even-tempered but mercurial gentleman, got very, very excited. Between his bellows and her sobs, her mother leveled questions and then accusations at her.
When they found out about the incipient changeover, the investors immediately threatened to challenge it in court -- law or no law, they weren't going to be guided by the decisions of an inexperienced snippet. In fact, of all those affected, the intended bridegroom took it best. After all, he was handsome and intelligent (if not as rich), and could damn well find himself another spouse. He wished Casperdan well and consoled himself with his cello.
Her father (for her own good, of course) joined with the investors to challenge his daughter in the courts. He protested most strongly. The investors ranted and pounded their checkbooks.
But the judge was honest, the law machines incorruptible, and the precedents clear. Casperdan got her Contract and a year in which to prove herself.
Her first official action was to rename the firm Dream Enterprises. A strange name, many thought, for an industrial concern. But it was more distinctive than the old one. The investors grumbled, while the advertising men were delighted.
Then began a program of industrial expansion and acquisition unseen on somnolent Calder since the days of settlement. Dream Enterprises was suddenly everywhere and into everything. Mining, manufacturing, raw materials. These new divisions sprouted tentacles of their own and sucked in additional businesses.
Paper and plastics, electronics, nucleonics, hydro-logics and parafoih'ng, insurance and banking, tridee stations and liquid tanking, entertainments and hydroponics and velosheeting.
Dream Enterprises became the wealthiest firm on Calder, then in the entire Stone Crescent.
The investors and Dandavid clipped their coupons
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Dream Done Green
and kept their mouths shut, even to ignoring Cas-perdan's odd relationship with an outsystem mal.
Eventually there came a morning when Pericles looked up from his huge lounge in the executive suite and stared across the room at Casperdan in a manner different from before.
The stallion had another line of silver in his mane. The girl had blossomed figuratively and figurewise. Otherwise the years had left them unchanged.
"I've booked passage for us. Put Rollins in charge. He's a good man."
"Where are we going?" asked Casperdan. Not why nor for how long, but where. She'd learned a great deal about the horse in the past few years.
"Quaestor."
Sudden sparkle in beautiful green eyes. "And then will you give me back what I once had?"
The horse smiled and nodded. "If everything goes smoothly."
In the Crescent, Dream Enterprises was powerful and respected and kowtowed to. In the Imperial sector it was different. There were companies on the capital planet that would classify it as a modest little family business. Bureaucratic trip-wires here ran not for kilometers, but for light-years.
However, Pericles had threaded this maze many times before, and knew both men and mal who worked within the bowels of Imperial Government.
So it was that they eventually found themselves in the offices of Sim-sem Alround, subminister for Unincorporated Imperial Territories.
Physically, Alround wasn't quite that. But he did have a comfortable bureaucratic belly, a rectangular face framed by long bushy sideburns and curly red hair tinged with white. He wore the current fashion, a monocle. For all that, and his dry occupation, he proved charming and affable.
A small stream ran through his office, filled with trout and tadpoles and cattails. Casperdan reclined on
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WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . ..
a long couch made to resemble solid granite. Pericles preferred to stand.
"You want to buy some land, then?" queried Alround after drinks and pleasantries had been exchanged.
"My associate will give you the details," Casperdan informed him. Alround shifted his attention from human to horse without a pause. Naturally he'd assumed ...
"Yes sir?"
"We wish to purchase a planet," said Pericles. "A small planet... not very important."
Alround waited. Visitors interested in small transactions didn't get in to see the subminister himself.