"Piper, H Beam - Fuzzy 2 - Other Human Race2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

belonged to him. It belonged to an abstraction called the
Chartered-no, Char­terless-Zarathustra Company, which
represented thousands of stock­holders, including a number of
other abstractions called Terra-Bal­dur-Marduk Spacelines, and
Interstellar Explorations, Ltd., and the Banking Cartel. He
wondered how Conrad Evins felt, working with these beautiful
things, knowing how much each of them was worth, and not owning
any of them.

"But I can tell you how little they are worth," Evins was saying, at the
end of a lecture on the Terra gem market. "The stones in this vault
are worth not one millisol less than one hundred million sols."

That sounded like a lot of money, if you said it quickly and didn't
think. The Chartered, even the Charterless, Zarathustra Company
was a lot of company, too, and all its operations were fantastically
expensive. That wouldn't be six months' gross business for the
com­pany. They couldn't let the sunstone business live on its
reserve.

"This is new, isn't it?" he asked, laying the red globe of light back
on the heated table top.

"Yes, Mr. Grego. We bought that less than two months ago. Shortly
before the Trial." He capitalized the word; the day Pendarvis beat
the company down with his gavel would be First Day, Year Zero, on
Zarathustra from now on. "it was bought," he added, "from Jack
Holloway."

2

SNAPPING OFF the shiny new stenomemophone, Jack Holloway
relit his pipe and pushed back his chair, looking around what had
been the living room of his camp before it had become the office
of the Commissioner of Native Affairs for the Class-IV Colonial
Planet of Zarathustra. It had been a pleasant room, a place where
a man could spread out by himself, or entertain the infrequent
visitors who came this far into the wilderness. The hardwood floor
was scattered with rugs made from the skins of animals he had
shot; the deep armchairs and the couch were covered with smaller
pelts. Like the big table at which he worked, he had built them
himself. There was a reading screen, a metal-cased library of
microbooks; the gunrack reflected soft gleams from polished
stocks and barrels. And now look at the damn place!

Two extra viewscreens, another communication screen, a
vo­cowriter, a teleprint machine, all jammed together. An
improvised table on trestles at right angles to the one at which he
sat, its top lit­tered with plans and blueprints and things; mostly
things. And this red-upholstered swivel chair; he hated that worst of