"Peter F. Hamilton - A Quantum murder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

floor windows, he knew even that small hope had just vanished. Eleanor pointed at him, and Corry
ran over the shaggy grass.
Greg switched off the little digger and climbed out of the cab, wellingtons squelching in the mud.
He was on the last row, just twenty saplings and stakes left to go. They were all
A QUANTUM MURDER
laid out ready. Patchy clouds tumbled across the sky, and the reservc~ir's far shore gleamed from
last night's rain, wisps of mist already rising as the day's heat began to build.
'Sir, sir, Dad sent me, sir,' Corry shouted. The lad was about ten or twelve, his face ruddy from
exertion, fright and exhilaration burning in his eyes. 'Please sir, they're going to kill him,
sir!' He slithered the last two metres, and Greg caught him.
'Kill who, Corry?'
Corry struggled to gulp down some air. 'Mr Collister, sir. There's everybody up there at his house
now. They're saying he used to be a Party Apache.'


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'Apparatchik,' Greg corrected grimly.
'Yes, sir. He wasn't, was he?'
Greg started walking towards the farm. 'Who knows?'
'I liked Mr Collister,' Corry said insistently.
'Yeah,' Greg said. Roy Collister was a solicitor who worked in Oakham; an unobtrusive, pleasant
man. He came into the village pub most nights. Someone who moaned about work and the price of beer
and inflation. Greg had shared a pint with him often enough. 'He's a nice man.' And that's always
the worst thing about it, Greg thought. Four years after the People's SociaJjsm Party fell, ending
ten years of a disastrous near-Marxist style government, people found it hard to forget, let alone
forgive the misery and fear they had endured. Hatred was still simmering strongly below the
surface of the nation's psyche. As for Collister, Greg had seen it before:
the allegations, the pointed finger. One hint, one whispered suspicion, was all it took: the
serpent of guilt never rested after that, gnawing at people's minds. Even the informants working
for the People's Constables weren't as bad; at least they had to produce some kind of evidence
before they got their blood money.
Eleanor was already backing the powerful four-wheel-drive English Motor Company Ranger out of the
barn when he reached the yard. It was a grey-painted farm utility vehicle, with a squat boxy body
on high, toughened suspension coils; the marque was the first of a new generation, powered by~
4
PETER F. HAMILTON
Event Horizon giga-conductor cells instead of the old-fashioned high-density polymer batteries.
She gave him a tight-lipped look which said it all. It took a lot to upset Eleanor.
They had been married just over a year. She had been twenty-one years old the day she walked down
the aisle of Hambleton's church, seventeen years younger than him, although that had never been an
issue. Her face was heart shaped, liberally splattered with freckles; a petite nose and wide green
eyes were framed by a mane of thick red hair which she brushed back from a broad forehead.
Physically, she was an all-out assault on his preferences. An adolescence spent on a PSP-
subsidized kibbutz where manual labour was emphasized and revered had given her the kind of robust
figure a channel starlet would kill for. Eleanor didn't see it quite in those terms, though she
had come to accept his unending enthusiasm and compliments with a kind of bemused tolerance. Even
now, dressed in a paint-splattered blue boiler suit, she looked tremendous.
Greg climbed into the Ranger's passenger seat, and shut the door. 'I want you to walk back into