"Timothy Zahn - Deadman Switch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

Randon met his gaze steadily. "I understood the Watchers have a settlement here on Whitecliff."

"I'm sure he'd be welcome there," Aikman countered. "But not anywhere else on the planet."

For a long moment the room was silent; silent with heavy discomfort from DeMont, with almost
calm calculation from Randon, with black hatred from Aikman. I lie surrounded by lions, greedy for
human prey...

An icy shiver ran up my back. I'd encountered hatred before—Watchers who left their settlements
couldn't avoid running into it these days. We'd been barely tolerated before Aaron Balaam
darMaupine and his followers had come on the scene; now, two decades later, feeling against us was
still running high. There was hatred everywhere—unthinking hatred, frightened hatred, even
inherited hatred. But Aikman's hatred was different. Cold, almost intellectual, it had far less actual
emotion simmering beneath it than it ought to have had.

God had given mankind intellect, one of my teachers had once said, and the Fall had given him
prejudice; and there was no human force more dangerous than a combination of the two.

Randon broke the brittle silence first. "I seem to remember, Mr. Aikman," he said, choosing his
words deliberately, "that one of the chief cornerstones of the original Patri Articles was the banning
of religious discrimination in the Patri and in all future colony worlds. I was unaware that policy had
been repealed."

The words were indignant enough; the emotions beneath them far less so. Randon's father, I knew,
would have felt automatic anger at such a brazen display of discrimination, but Randon's own world
view wasn't set up that way. To him, I was less a human being than a tool with useful properties. But
that didn't prevent him from using my humanity to score a few points in this psychological trapshoot
he had needled Aikman into playing.

Not that Aikman needed much prodding. "We have a fair number of emigres from Bridgeway," he
countered harshly. "They haven't forgotten what darMaupine nearly did there. Neither have the rest
of us."

"That was over twenty years ago," Randon pointed out coolly. "Mr. Benedar was all of eleven years
old when darMaupine's experiment in theocracy was brought down."

"I'm not responsible for his age," Aikman said, the first hint of caution beginning to break through
the anger as he abruptly seemed to remember who this young man was he was arguing with. "I'm
also not responsible for the concept of guilt by association. I merely state the relevant facts."

"Then I take it you've not forgotten the most relevant of those facts, Mr. Aikman," Randon shot

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Deadman Switch

back. "I'm in charge of this man... and the Carillon Group is in charge of HTI. Which means I make
the decisions on this trip."

Behind his lips, Aikman clenched his teeth, and for a second some of his hatred for me shifted to
Randon...