"Michael Swanwick - Stations of the Tide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

eyes fixed on some distant tragedy more compelling than present danger could ever be. Two dark
cuplines curved under each eye. "Yes?" he said.
Lieutenant Chu saluted crisply, and the bureaucrat, remembering in time that all airship commanders
held parallel commissions in internal security, offered his credentials. Bergier glanced down at them,
handed them back. "Not everyone welcomes your sort on our planet, sir," the commander said. "You
keep us in poverty, you live off our labor, you exploit our resources, and you pay us with nothing but
condescension."
The bureaucrat blinked, astonished. Before he could frame a response, the commander continued,
"However, I am an officer, and I understand my duty." He popped a lozenge into his mouth and sucked
noisily. A rotten-sweet smell filled the cabin. "Make your demands."
"I'm not making any demands," the bureaucrat began. "I only--"
"There speaks the voice of power. You maintain a stranglehold on the technology that could turn
Miranda into an earthly paradise. You control manufacturing processes that allow you to undercut our
economy at will. We exist at your whim and sufferance and in the form you think good. Then you walk in
here carrying this whip and making demands you doubtless prefer to call requests and pretend it is for
our own good. Let us not cap this performance with hypocrisy, sir."
"Technology didn't exactly make an 'earthly paradise' of Earth. Or don't they teach classical history
here?"
"The perfect display of arrogance. You deny us our material heritage, and now you have as good as
asked me to thank you for it. Well, sir, I will not. I have my pride. And I--" He paused. In the sudden
silence it was observable how his head nodded slightly at irregular intervals, as if he fought off sleep. His
mouth opened and shut, opened and shut again. His eyes slid slowly to the side in search of his lost
thought. "And, ah. And, ah--"
"The illusionist," the bureaucrat insisted. "Lieutenant Chu's impersonator. Have you found him yet?"
Bergier straightened, his fire and granite restored. "No, sir, we have not. We have not found him, for
he is not here to be found. He has left the ship."
"That's not possible. You docked once, and nobody debarked. I was watching."
"This is a seaward flight. It is all but empty. On the landward run, yes, perhaps an agile and
determined man could evade me. But I have accounted for every passenger and had my crew open
every stowage compartment and equipment niche in the Levi. I went so far as to send an engineer with
an airpack up the gas vents. Your man is not here."
"It's only logical he'd've secured his escape beforehand. Maybe he had a collapsible glider hidden
forward," Chu suggested. "It wouldn't have been difficult for an athletic man. He could have just opened
a window and slipped away."
More likely, the bureaucrat thought, and the thought struck him with the force of inevitability, more
likely he had simply bribed the captain to lie for him. That was how he himself would've arranged it. To
cover his suspicion, he said, "What bothers me is why Gregorian went to all this trouble to find out how
much we know about him. It hardly seems worth his effort."
Bergier scowled at his screens, said nothing. He touched a control, and the timbre of one engine
changed, grew deeper. Slowly, slowly the ship began to turn.
"He was just baiting you," Chu said. "Nothing more complicated than that."
"Is that likely?" the bureaucrat said dubiously.
"Magicians are capable of anything. Their thinking isn't easy to follow. Hey! Maybe that was
Gregorian himself? He was wearing gloves, after all."
"Pictures of Gregorian and of our impersonator," the bureaucrat said. "Front and side both." He
removed them from his briefcase, shook off the moisture, laid them side by side beside the screens. "No,
look at that -- it's absurd to even contemplate. What does his wearing gloves have to do with anything?"
Chu carefully compared the tall, beefy figure of Gregorian with the slight figure of her impersonator.
"No," she agreed. "Just look at those faces." Gregorian had a dark, animal power, even in the picture. He
looked more minotaur than man, so strong-jawed and heavy-browed that he passed through mere