"Niven, Larry - Limits (SS Coll)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

As to Jill, she didn't change much. The Shack was the first step in the conquest of the universe, and it was by God going to be finished and self-sufficient. Partly it was a memorial to Ty, I think; but she really believed in what she was doing, and it was infectious.

I could see how Jack could convince her that he shared her goal. To a great extent he did, although it was pure selfishness; his considerable reputation was riding on this project. But Jack never did anything half-heartedly. He drove himself at whatever be was doing.

What I couldn't understand was why he was here at all. He must have known how thin were the chances of completing the Shack before he left Earth.

I had to know before it drove me nuts.

Jack didn't drink much. When he did it was often a disaster, because he was the world's cheapest drunk. So one night I plied him.

Night is generally relative, of course, but this-one was real: the Earth got between us and the sun. Since we were on the same orbit as the Moon, but sixty degrees ahead, that happened to us exactly as often as there are eclipses of the Moon on Earth; a rare occasion, one worth celebrating.

Of course we'd put-in a day's work first, so the party didn't last long, we were all too beat. Still it was a start, and when the formalities broke up and Jill. went off to look at the air system, I grabbed Jack and got him over to my quarters. We both collapsed in exhaustion.

I had brought a yeast culture with me from Canaveral. McLeve had warned me that liquor cost like diamonds up here; and a way to make my own alcohol seemed a good investment. And it was. By now I had vacuum distilled vodka made from fermented fruit bars and a mash of strawberries from the farm- they weren't missed; the farm covered a quarter of the inner surface now. My concoction tasted better than it sounds, and it wasn't hard to talk Jack into a drink, then another.

Presently he was trying to sing the verses to "The Green Hills of Earth." A mellower man you never saw. I seized my chance.

"So you love the green hills of Earth so much, what are you doing here? Change your mind about Rio?"

Jack shook his head; the vibration ran down his arm and sloshed his drink. "Nope Outside a hen cackled, and Jack collapsed in laughter. "Let me rest my eyes on the fleecy
skies..."

Grimly I stuck to the subject. "I thought you were all set with that Tucson arcology."

"Oh, I was. I was indeed. It was a beautiful setup. Lots of pay, and-" He stopped abruptly.

"And other opportunities?" I was beginning to see the light.

"Well. . . yes. You have to see it the way I did. First, it was a great opportunity to make a name for myself. A city in a building! Residential and business and industry all in the same place, one building to house a quarter... of a million people. And it would have been beautiful. Corky. The plans were magnificent! I was in love with it. Then I got into it, and I saw what was really going on.

"Corky. everyone was stealing that place blind! The first week I went to the chief engineer to report shortages in deliveries and he just looked at me. 'Stick to your own work, Halfey.' says he. Chief engineer, the architects, construction bosses, even the catering crew-every one of them was knocking down twenty-five, fifty percent! They were selling the cement right off the boxcars and substituting sand. There wasn't enough cement in that concrete to hold up the walls."

"So you took your share."

"Don't get holy on me! Dammit. look at it my way. I was willing to play square, but they wouldn't let me. The place was going to fall down. The weight of the first fifty thousand people would have done it. What I could do was make sure nobody got inside before it happened." Jack Halfey chortled. 'I'm a public benefactor. I am. I sold off the reinforcing rods. The inspectors couldn't possibly ignore that."

"Nothing else?" I asked.

"Well, those rods were metal-whisker compote. Almost as strong as diamond, and almost as expensive. I didn't need anything else. Rut I made sure they'd never open that place to the public. Then I stashed my ill-gotten gains and went underground and waited for something to happen.".

"I never heard much about it. Of course I wouldn't, up here."

"Not many down there heard either. Hush hush while the FBI looked into it. The best buy I ever made in my life was a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. Just a paragraph about how the Racket Squad was investigating Mafia involvement in the Tucson arcology. That's when things fell into place."

I swung around to refill his glass, carefully. We use great big glasses, and never fill them more than half full. Otherwise they slosh all over the place in the low gravity. I had another myself. it was pretty good vodka. and if I felt it, Jack must be pickled blue. "You mean the building fell in?"

"No, no. I realized why there was so much graft." Jack sounded aggrieved. "There was supposed to be graft. I wasn't supposed to get in on it."

"Aha."