"Harry Harrison - Deathworld 3" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

"Don't sound so wildly depressed at the thought. Try to control your
impatience until 1500 hours, when the others will be here. I play no
favorites. Except myself, that is," he added, walking out stiffly, trying to
move his side as little as possible.

It was time for a change, he thought, looking out of a high window
across the perimeter wall to the deadly jungle beyond. Some lightsensitive
cells must have caught the motion because a tree branch whipped forward and a
sudden flurry of thorndarts rattled against the transparent metal of the
window. His reflexes were so well trained by now that he did not move a
muscle.

Past time for a change. Every day on Pyrrus was another spin of the
wheel. Winning was just staying even, and when your number came up, it was
certain death. How many people had died since he first came here? He was
beginning to lose track, to become as indifferent to death as any Pyrran.

If there were going to be any changes made, he was the one who would
have to make them. He had thought once that he had solved this planet's deadly
problems, when he had proved to them that the relentless, endless war was
their own doing. Yet it still went on. Knowledge of the truth does not always
mean acceptance of it. The Pyrrans who were capable of accepting the reality
of existence here had left the city and had gone far enough away to escape the
pressure of physical and mental hatred that still engulfed it. Although the
remaining Pyrrans might give lip-service to the concept that their own
emotions were keeping the war going, they did not really believe that this was
true. And each time they looked out at the world that they hated, the enemy
gained fresh strength and pressed the attack anew. When Jason thought of the
only possible end for the city, he grew depressed. There were so many of the
people left who would not accept the change-or help of any kind. They were as
much a part of this war and as adapted to the war as the hyperspecialized life
forms outside, molded in the same way by the same generations of mixed hatred
and fear.

There was one more change coming. He wondered how many of them would
accept it.

It was many hours before Jason made his appearance in Kerk's office. he
had been delayed by a last-minute exchange of messages on the jump-space
communicator. Everyone in the room shared the same expression, cold anger.
Pyrrans had very little patience and even less tolerance for a puzzle or a
mystery. They were so alike-yet so different.

Kerk, gray-haired and stolid, able to control his .expression better
than the others. Practice, undoubtedly, from dealing so much with offworlders.
This was the man whom it was most important to convince because, if the
slapdash, militaristic Pyrran society had any leader at all, he was the one.

Brucco, hawk-faced and lean, his features set in a perpetual expression
of suspicion. The expression was justified. As physician, researcher and