"James Alan Gardner - League of Peoples 04 - Hunted" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)

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James Alan Gardner

Hunted
To Rob and Carolyn, for getting me started in the Show,
then continuing to cheer from the stands.



Thanks to the usual crew: Linda Carson, Richard Curtis, and Jennifer Brehl. For continuing support, a
big thank-you too to Andy Heidel and Lou Aronica.

Since I'm writing this in 1999, I'd like to thank the developers of Microsoft Word for DOS 5.0, still the
most useful word processor for a fiction writer; and then I'd like to whack those same developers upside
the head for not making the software Y2K-compliant. Come December 31, I'll have to switch to some
elephantine replacement that thinks it knows what I want... when what I want is a decent thesaurus,
intelligent use of style sheets, and a user interface that doesn't keep making me take my hands off the
keyboard. (Gardner's Third Law: When a particular computer operation requires you to use the mouse,
you will never get faster at that operation than your very first day of using the software. In other words,
hunt-and-peck beats point-and-click. Grumble, grumble, grumble...)




Part 1

CROSSING THE LINE

1

GOING TO A PARTY


The first day of the flight, I was so happy to be heading home that I went toWillow's cafeteria for supper
with the crew... and it seemed as if every woman on the starship wanted me to try the Angoddi
mushrooms, or did I listen to razzah poetry, or would I like a look at the engine-room service tunnels
when the next shift was over?

I'd forgotten how bored folks get on long tours of duty. Bored with their jobs, bored with each other.
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One glimpse of a new face, and people go into feeding frenzy. Or breeding frenzy. Maybe I should have
been flattered, but all that eager attention sort of got me terrified—I'd been stuck on a three-person