"James Patrick Kelly - Dividing the Sustain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

decades of experience trav-eling on slipships dividing the sustain, he had learned the
hard way that it never paid to provoke the crew.

“No, no trouble.” Uninvited, Been sat down on the float across the desk from
Emsley. It settled toward the deck briefly, before bearing up under his weight. “The
thing is that Friday is my birthday and…well…I’m afraid I underreported my age.
I’m actually going to be a hundred and thirty-two. Born on April 11 2351. On
Titan—that’s a moon you’ve probably never heard of back in the First System.
Only eight and a half AU from Earth. Practically next door to the homeworld
although I never did make it there. Somebody said the captain hails from Earth, or is
that just a rumor? Be-cause that would practically make us neighbors. How come we
never see him—Captain Quellan, I mean? He’s not virtual, is he?”

“You see him every day on the lightboards.” Both of Emsley’s heads gazed at
him sternly. “This is a colonial transport, Mr. Watanabe, not a cruise ship. The
captain keeps a lean crew and likes to make sure things are done right, which means
he’s too busy to be socializing with passengers.”

“My friends call me Been.” He pushed at the deck and the float bobbed and
swung away from the counter. “Right, I understand he’s busy. So anyway, I’m a
hundred and thirty-two and feel like I might be going a little stale so I’m thinking it’s
time for a recast.”

“I take it you had some reason to claim that you were fifty years younger than
you actually are?” Emsley seemed more amused that annoyed at Been’s confession.
“You’ve deceived us, Mr. Watanabe.”

“Not you so much as Henk Krall and Lars Benzonia.” On another ship bound
for a different planet, this might have been a serious matter. But the Nine Ball was
no luxury liner and Been suspected that he wasn’t the only one on board who had
misrepresented himself. Zola, for example, seemed rather an unlikely Consensualist.

“Hmm,” said Emsley. “I thought you people were against changing
per-sonalities.”

“We’re not against it, we’re just supposed to get consensus on it and that’s
hard. Can you keep a secret?”

Emsley pointed at the lightboard and the hatch to BioCore slid shut. “Try
me.”

“I’m not so sure I am a Consensualist anymore.”

“Mr. Watanabe, we’re bound for a colony that is almost entirely
Con-sensual.”

“Been,” he said. “I guess that will make me someone special, won’t it?
Actually, at first I was wondering if I shouldn’t recast as a woman but then I thought
that it would be too much trouble in too short a time. I mean we are going to make
planetfall soon, aren’t we? The captain’s first estimate was that it would take just