"Traviss,.Karen.-.wess'har.wars.1.-.City.of.Pearl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Traviss Karen)

McEvoy crouched down level with her seat. “All locked down, Guv’nor. We should have it logged and wrapped in six hours, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t start carrying out preliminary interviews now.”

Shan cocked her head discreetly in the direction of the man she’d spotted at the drinks dispenser. “I’d make a start on him,” she said. “Just a feeling. Anyway, I’d better go and pay my respects to the station manager. This has probably ruined her entire day.”

And this time next month, I’ll be clearing my desk.

Mars Orbital looked and felt exactly as the schematics on her swiss had told her it would. She took the little red cylinder with its white cross from her pocket and unfurled its plasma screen to study the station layout.

“You should treat yourself to some new technology,” McEvoy said, and tapped the side of his head, indicating his implants. “How old is that thing?”

“Hundreds of years, and still as good as that thing in your skull. I’m an old-fashioned girl. I like my computing in my pocket.” She stood up and oriented herself along the lines of the map on the swiss’s screen, then set off down the main passageway. Looking straight ahead, she could detect the gradual curve of the main ring. For a second she felt she might be falling, but she looked straight ahead, resisting the temptation to stare out of the nearest observation area to goggle at a Mars that filled her field of view. It wasn’t her first time away from Earth, but she had never been within touching distance of an inhabited planet before. She wondered if she might find time to do a few tourist things before departing. She’d never get another free flight like this again.

The station manager’s office was exactly where the swiss said it would be. Its name-plated occupant, Cathy Borodian, was quietly angry. “I thought you people were on a fact-finding mission for the European Assembly.”

“It wasn’t a complete lie. We’re still finding facts, aren’t we?” Shan stood before her desk and watched the woman trying to cope without access to her mainframe, hands fumbling across the softglass surface; it remained steadfastly blank, showing only a SYSTEM UNAVAILABLE screen under the coffee cup and half-eaten chocolate brioche. “We’ll be out of here as soon as we possibly can. Routine inspection for biological and environmental hazards you’re not licensed to manage.”

“I don’t think Warrenders is going to be happy about this. They have a contract.”

“Well, last time I looked, civilian government still just about ran Europe. Not corporations.”

“Are you able to tell me exactly what the problem is?”

“So there’s a problem?”

“No. Not at all.”

“The Federal European Union doesn’t ship out forty audit and technical officers unless it thinks there might be irregularities. Does that answer your question?”

“Not completely. What about our teams on the surface? Can they come back inboard?”

“If they need to, they can flash us and one of my people will escort them.” Shan understood the woman, even if she felt no sympathy for her. She had schedules and commercial pressures, and shutting down the orbital was a major crisis, with or without a police investigation. Downtime cost money. “I’ll be in the cabin you assigned me, if you have any questions—or anything you want to tell me.”

It turned out to be quite a pleasant cabin. Borodian must have wanted a good report to the Assembly, because there was a real viewplate and a shower cubicle. Shan dropped her grip on the bunk and stood at the plate for a few minutes, mesmerized. McEvoy had told her she could see the American and Pacifica stations at different times of the day if she followed his instructions, but she was far more captivated by the rusty orange disk that filled the window. It was so vivid that it looked unreal, a projection for her education or entertainment. No matter how hard she tried to see it as a three-dimensional sphere, it remained an illustration on a flat screen.

Movement caught her eye. Along the jutting spar of a mooring boom, two figures in self-luminescent green marshaling suits were guiding a tiny vessel into a bay. No mainframe access meant the automatic navigation was down; they were securing the ship manually, one standing on the gantry above the vessel and signaling with spiraling hand gestures, one alongside on the boom operating the winch.

Odd to think they still used antiquated hand signals. But even Morse code still had its uses. There was a lot to be said for old tech, Shan thought, and toyed with the swiss in her pocket.

She watched. Slowly, slowly, farther astern, then the figure on the gantry held arms aloft, wrists crossed in an X, the signal to make fast, to secure the lines. The locking buffers extended to take the touch of the stern, and the vessel shivered to a halt. And suddenly she couldn’t see the hand signals of the berth marshals anymore, because she was looking at the leather-glove hands of a gorilla.

The primate was staring intently into her face as it made the same gesture, the same sign, over and over again; rubbing its palm in a circular motion over its chest, then a fiston-palm gesture. Its eyes never left hers.

Please help me. Please help me. Please…

She didn’t know what it meant at the time. The animal technician had said it was asking for food, please, and wasn’t it great that you could teach apes to sign? And she had believed him, right up to the time when a deaf interpreter told her what the gesture really meant.

How could I have known? She didn’t sign. But she knew now, and she had gone on knowing every day ever since, and the shame and regret had not faded any more than had the blinding, personal revelation that there was a person behind those ape eyes.

The gorilla was gone and lime-green shiny marshals were working their way, hand over hand, up the gantry to the next mooring. Mars was as red as Australia. She had forgotten how much color there was to see in space.