"Lavie Tidhar - Revolution Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tidhar Lavie)

“Yes!” I said when Joe first told me of his discovery. I was his contact to Hope’s own Socialist
underground, and even though I suspected Bangkok was informed long before I was, my excitement was
not affected. Joe nodded enthusiastically. “You have to pass this along to your Committee,” he said.
“And I’ll do the same with my people.”

I didn’t dare suggest that he already did. I got in touch with my own contact, not specifying the exact
nature of what I needed to tell the committee. She, in turn – and after interrogating me for several minutes
without results - got in touch with hers, and a mere hour later I was summoned to an address I was not
given before, to meet personally with the Committee.

To my surprise, Joe was already there when I came in.

It was a nondescript building in a nondescript suburb. The three men and three women who regarded us
in silence were on the whole themselves nondescript. Their aura of authority, however, was unmistakable.

They thanked us for coming, offered us a cup of tea, and then, dismissing the formalities of manners,
began asking us questions. Well, Joe mainly.

After two hours we were asked to wait in the kitchen of the house, where a man with a discreet bulge for
a gun kept us company, making coffee without speaking.

When we were called back, the Committee had made a decision. Our new cell was set up there and
then: Morgan and Monty had appeared the next day, in the early morning.

By noon, we started preparing for the raid.




It was night when we set out to capture the time machine.

I wasn’t even supposed to go. The event itself, the raid (though I thought of it as a kind of a heist) was to
be carried out by pros, and the movement did not consider me proper combat material.

But I managed to come along. A last minute argument, pulled out of thin air: the need for a reception
committee. Monty, taut as a wire and carrying two enormous guns that made him look like a deadly
leprechaun, was unconvinced at first, but a sense of decorum, a respect for the man we were going to
bring forward finally prevailed, and I was allowed to tag along, at the rear of the operation.

The Movement had pulled out all the stops. Not only the Socialist Alliance, who donated the bodies for
the operation, but the Kibbutz movement, sending out stealth satellites from their bases on the asteroids,
to sit at one geo-stationary position above Hope, Nevada, USA, and send our ground troops real-time
information. Morgan’s Wicca group brought with them the weaponry, a military-grade classified arsenal
that no one dared ask where they had acquired it.

I was supposed to tag after Morgan, which I didn’t object to at all.

We set out at dark, moving in silent, black vehicles through different routes within the city, then
converged together into a line as we left the suburbs and entered the desert.