"Lawrence Watt-Evans - War Surplus 01 - The Cyborg And The Sorcerers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

room, except for the acceleration couch he lay on and the direct-control cable that was attached to it He
wondered if perhaps he could have spent his money better.

Of course, he had other furnishings in the aft storage compartments. There were several statuettes and
small sculptures, and an assortment of hangings for the walls— everything from simple watercolors to
tuned crystal-and-wire matrices that droned eerie music when blown on, either by Slant or by the ship's
air circulation system.

It probably was time to rotate furnishings; the tapestries had had their turn. He could mount a few
statuettes on lightbars; there were some electrostatic adhesive disks somewhere on board that would
keep them secure on such makeshift pedestals.

It might, he thought, be a welcome change just to have different colors; he thought a command to the
computer, and the golden chameleon fur turned glossy black. That was certainly more dramatic, with the
extruded lightbars in bright contrast to the walls; the tapestries stood out vividly, red and blue and gold.
The bookcase, haphazardly packed with multicolored bindings, stood out too clearly against the dark
background; it looked sloppy. He turned the fur white.

That was better. The lightbars were scarcely visible, and although the bookcase still stood out, it seemed
quietly dark now instead of bright and rowdy.

As usual, playing with the chameleon fur aroused his artistic interests. He had studied art history in college
mostly because the courses happened to fit his schedule neatly—a detail of civilian life that he had, oddly,
been allowed to remember—but he did have a genuine interest in color, form, and composition. That was
why he had all the books and art objects; he had, he recalled, fancied himself something of a scholar in
the artistic area, back when he was young and naive. He had thought that when the war was over he
could retire honorably and spend his days studying mankind's attempts to create beauty.

Instead he was still out in space, crawling his way across the galaxy, playing out the role of spy and
saboteur on behalf of an extinct nation, studying each world's capacity to destroy other words.

It could be worse; at least he was primarily interested in military targets. His mission was to determine of
each world he came across whether it was capable of launching an attack on Old Earth, and where such
capability existed, to destroy it if possible. He was to capture any new weapons he came across, so that
they could be duplicated by his side back on Mars. It was not a particularly bad job, if one had to be an
IRU. He had heard that some of his compatriots had been assigned terror missions, with instructions to
destroy whatever they found and slaughter whoever they could; that was the sort of assignment he could
not have handled. He wondered whether any of those IRUs were still, like himself, wandering about,
unable to surrender. He hoped that there were none, that any such that might have existed were all long
dead. He could justify his actions to some extent on the grounds that he was destroying war machinery,
and therefore promoting peace, but there could be no justification for simply wreaking as much havoc as
possible.

Of course, he knew his own justification was just a rationalization; he fought on because he had to, to
survive, and probably a terrorist IRU would do the same.

That line of thought was depressing, leading back again to the prospect of having his brain burned out if
he tried to surrender; he dropped it and looked about at the white walls. The tapestries stood out in dark
contrast, and he decided white was too harsh. He was considering light blue, trying to envision it before
he actually tried it, when a chime sounded, the computer's warning signal.