"Jerry Pournelle - High Justice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pournelle Jerry)

whole chain from the King of Tonga, paying off with electric power, fresh water, fish, fertilizer,
and expert advice on how to support too many Tongans on too few islands. The land area of Ta'avu
was insignificant, but it wasn't land they needed.
Now he could make out the big microwave dishes which beamed power from the Station to the
inhabited parts of the Tonga Islands. That was an inefficient way to transmit power, but there was
plenty to spare at the Station. The plane circled lower, and Adams could see dams and locks,
enormous sea walls closing off the lagoons from the oceans. He winced, remembering how much they
had cost, and then there were the smaller dams and net booms dividing the lagoon into pens.
A chime sounded and Adams picked up the phone. Mike King, his assistant, said, "We're almost
there, sir. Shall we take her in?"
"No. Have the pilots circle the Station. I want a better picture before I land."
"Yes, sir. Want me back there?"
"No, I think Miss Graves can tell me what I need to know. Unless you'd care to join us?"
King laughed nervously, betraying his youth. "Thanks, but I'd rather not . . . Uh, the pilots are
giving me a pretty good briefing, sir."
"Fine." Adams hung up the phone and chuckled softly. There was no question about it, Mrs. Leslie
King had great influence over her husband. Fancy being afraid to be around Courtney. ... Of course
she was pretty and Leslie would be joining Mike if Adams decided to leave Mike at the Station.
Maybe Michael was right to stay away from temptation. The plane dropped lower, down to five
hundred feet. Bill Adams turned to Courtney.
"Where are the whales?"
"In the big lagoon-there, look carefully, you can usually see them. Yes!" She pointed excitedly.
"Over there, on the other side from the reactors."
Adams looked for a moment, then gasped. There were three dark shapes visible under the water, and
they were big. One seemed to grow, larger, larger, impossibly huge, then broke the surface and
rolled lazily, great flukes splashing. A hundred feet long, the largest thing that ever lived on
the earth.
"That's Susie," Courtney said happily. "She's almost tame. You can get close to her in a boat."
"My God, that's a big animal!" Bill said. "What are the small things around her? Baby whales?"


file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Jerry%20Pournelle%20-%20High%20Justice.txt (2 of 94) [11/1/2004 12:18:01 AM]
 file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Jerry%20Pournelle%20-%20High%20Justice.txt

Courtney laughed. "Those are dolphins, Mr. Adams. We don't have any baby blue wales, nobody does.
We hope Susie's pregnant, but how can you tell? The dolphins patrol the lagoon for us. You know
how we used them to get Susie and her friends here in the first place?"
Adams shook his head. "Not really. I was busy on something else." He made a wry face. "This whale
business is strange. Only thing the Company ever did that doesn't at least threaten a profit. Mr.
Lewis insists on it, but you can't imagine how much it has cost."
"Oh." She looked at him sternly and let a note of disapproval into her voice. "It was worth it,
Mr. Adams, Look at those whales! How could you let something so magnificent be exterminated? I
guess it was costly, though," she added hastily. Shouldn't get him angry with me. . . . "Never
gave it a thought, but- well, training the dolphins to herd whales took a long time. Then finding
the whales-there aren't more than a dozen left in the whole world. And even with the dolphins it
took a long time to drive four whales to the Station. They kept getting away and the dolphins had
to go find them again."
"I know something about how long it took," Adams observed dryly. "While Cerebus was on that
project, Southern California Edison grabbed two icebergs from us. Big ones, three hundred billion
gallons at least. Poseidon and Aquarius were left out in the Antarctic with nothing to do for