"Robert Frezza - McClendon's Syndrome" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frezza Robert)

"Well, yeah, but McLendon never said which three percent, and I'm not real interested
in finding out just how lucky I am."
She took me gently by the wrist with long, slender ringers. "Oh, sit down! I won't bite."
I sat, no tribute to my common sense. "Promise?"
"Promise. Cross my heart and hope to put a stake in it." She tilted her head again.
"Tell me about the Scupper."
How many vampires have good legs and a sense of humour? I sat. I told. "What
would you like to know? The Scupper is Kobold class, eleven hundred meters and five
holds. She came out of the Blotun und Voss shipyard at Luna nineteen years ago and
reached her present exalted state by a process of steady decline. Her skipper, Davie Lloyd
Ironsides, picked her up at auction when the Star Lines went spectacularly bankrupt four
years ago. Since then, she's been affectionately described as both a hazard to navigation
and a bucket of bolts travelling in close formation. We haul general freight nobody wants to
places where people might not realise this fact immediately."
Catarina nodded.
I shrugged. "She's competitive on rinky-dink gravity wells like Schuyler's. This
particular landrail, we unloaded a few tons of Thai gimcrack appliances to barter for guano
and other sophisticated local manufactures."
"Where's the profit margin in that?" she asked innocently.
"Truth is, there's not much of one. I make more on straight salary as a journeyman
than Davie Lloyd takes out of the ship. After we service the loan, we might clear ten dollars a
ton,"
She smiled very slightly. "Don't the transshipment costs eat you up?"
I shook my head. "To handle low-density bulk cargo, all Schuyler's needs is a
platform in stationary orbit, a which, a pump, and thirty kilometres of frictionless
four-centimetre vacuum tubing. With the price of a secondhand chute, it actually costs us
more to float our appliances down than it did to suck up a return cargo."
"Of manure?"
I shrugged again. "It's an even exchange. We knew what we were getting was
fertiliser. If the inhabitants of Schuyler's didn't, they'll figure it out quick—which is why I had
expected Davie Lloyd Ironsides to have departed here yesterday, if not sooner."
"What about Davie Lloyd Ironsides?"
"Iron-Ass. Iron-Ass is a pain even when trying to be polite, which is seldom. Davie
Lloyd is one of those people who remind you of the flaws in the theory that all men are
created equal. The fact that a torchship can pretty well fly herself makes his skill at
mismanaging people his most noticeable deficiency. I often elaborate on his shortcomings,
mental and moral, for Harry's benefit, which Harry enjoys because he learns new words with
which to insult his customers."
I studied her face. "To ask a delicate question, since a vamp has about as much
chance of passing port clearance as an axe-murderer—which you might very well be—how
did you get into space? As a class, spacers tend to be stuffy about incurable, unpredictable
diseases."
She reached into the purse around her waist and pulled out a plastic card, then
turned her head sideways and let it drift onto the table.
I picked it up. It was a Guild card, a match to my own except for the word
"Apprentice" overstamped. She was a spacer. I whistled, long and liquid, and glared at her.
"And you asked if the transshipment costs eat you up? Right. How did you get through... Oh,
hell. Don't tell me."
She nodded. "Night school."
"I had to ask. Why space, I ask?"