"Mack Reynolds - Code Duello" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

"How?"

"Well—" Rhodes hesitated. "Somehow. You never know."

Ross Metaxa grunted, as though in despair. He fished absently in his
desk and emerged with his squat brown bottle and several glasses. He
said, as though not expecting an affirmative answer. "Would anybody like
to try this Denebian tequila?"

"Bit early for me," Horsten murmured politely. The others except
Helen, had evidently heard of Metaxa's tequila; they shook their heads,
even as the Commissioner poured one of the glasses full.

Helen beat her superior to it. The drink went down as though it was
fruit juice. "Um," she said. "Smooth." She put the glass back.

"Smooth?" Metaxa said blankly. He looked at the brown bottle. "That's
the first time anybody called it that." He looked at the seeming child, in
her party dress, and shaking his head, he evidently decided against his
own drink, as though already his senses where betraying him.

He said, "Look, I'm feeling less optimistic about this assignment by the
minute, but let's go. Have any of you ever heard of a planet named
Firenze?"

Dorn Horsten said slowly, "I attended a conference on the phylum
Thallophyta there, some years ago. Although at the time I wasn't
particularly interested in her institutions, it seemed a moderately
progressive world."

"Not progressive enough. Firenze is a comparatively recently colonized
planet. Most of the population came from Avalon, which in turn had been
settled from Italy. Firenze, in a way, is still a frontier world and one would
expect a wonderful atmosphere for the competent to develop.
Unfortunately, it hadn't worked out that way."

"And," Helen prompted, serious now, her voice adult, "our job will be to
overthrow the politico-economic system and get things underway?"

But Ross Metaxa was scowling denial. "No. To the contrary. The First
Signore and his government have been plagued by an underground for
decades. An underground so insidious that the measures that have had to
be taken to contain it are what are holding up proper development. The
planet can't get underway because of the necessity to fight these
subversives."

Horsten pushed his pince-nez glasses back onto the bridge of his nose
in consideration. "We have a Section G representative there?"