"Anderson, Poul - Explorationsl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

When she sought me out, I had lately been appointed head of the Uriel relief mission. To organize this, I had taken an office in New Jerusalem, high up in Armstrong Center where my view swept across city roofs and towers, on over the Cimarron to the wheat-bronze Kansas plain beyond. That day was hard, hot, cloudless. The cross on the topmost spire of the Supreme Church blazed as if its gold had gone incandescent, and flitfighters on guard above the armored bulk of the Capitol gleamed like dragonflies. Though the room was air-conditioned, I could almost feel the weather beyond my window, a seethe or crackle amongst steady murmurs of traffic.

My intercom announced, "Mrs. Asklund, sir." I muttered a heartfelt "Damn!" and laid down the manifest I'd been working on. I'd forgotten that, somehow, the wife of Uriel's navigator had obtained a personal appointment. Hadn't I overmuch to do, in ghastly short time, without soothing distraught females ? Eidophone conversations with two other crewmen's wives had been difficult-when at least they were accepting God's will in Christian fortitude, and wanted only to ask about sending messages or gifts to the men they would never remeet in his life. "Aweel, remind her I've but a few minutes to spill, and let her in," I ordered.

Then Daphne came through the door, and everything was suddenly a bright surprise.

She was tall. A gown of standard dark modesty did not hide a fine figure. The skirt swished around her ankles with the sea-wind vigor of her stride. Green-eyed, curve-nosed, full-mouthed, framed in coils of mahogany hair, her face wasn't pretty, it was beautiful. I saw there not sorrow but determination. When she stopped before my desk, folded her hands and bowed her head above them to me, the salutation had scant meekness. Yet her voice was low and mild, the English bearing a slight accent: "Captain Sinclair, I am Daphne Asklund. You are kind to receive me."

We both knew I did so because she had pulled wires. However, I could say no less than, "Please sit down, sister. I'd call this a pleasure were the occasion not sad. How can I be of help to you?"

She settled herself and spent a few seconds studying my grizzle-topped lankiness, almost like a friendly challenge, before she curved her lips upward a very little and answered, "You can hear me out, sir. What I'll propose isn't quite as fantastic as it will sound."

"The whole business is fantastic." I leaned back in my own chair and reached for my pipe. "Uh, I do sympathize. I'm affected too. Matthew King was my classmate at the Academy, and we were always close friends afterward."

"But you don't know Valdemar?"

"Your husband? Not really, I fear. The Astro-nautic Corps is small enough that we have occasionally been at the same conference or the same refresher training session; but it's big enough that we didn't get truly acquainted. He did ... does impress me well, Mrs. Asklund."

"Uriel's skipper is your friend. Its navigator is my husband. I hope you can imagine the difference," she said: no hint of self-pity, simply remarking on a fact.

I am not sure why, already then, I let go my reserve and told her, "Yes. My wife died only last year."

Her look softened. "I'm sorry. My aplogies. Captain Sinclair. I've been too snarled in my personal troubles to-Well." She straightened. "Val is not departed, though. He ... they all face years, decades of ... endless trial." Exile, imprisoned in a metal shell ahurtle among the stars- perhaps at last madness, murder, horror beyond guessing, till a lone man squatted among dead bones-she did not mention these things either.

I gathered myself to speak bluntly. "We'll do what we can for them. That's the duty I'm on, and you will forgive me if it leaves scant attention to spare for anybody Earthbound. I-I am told clergy are counseling the wives to-Well, they expect the Pastorate will soon permit, aye, encourage dissolution of any unions involved, and the ladies be free to remarry. Has not your minister spoken to you of this?"

She met my plainness with hers. "No. I am not a Christian. My maiden name was Greenbaum."

"What?"

"I'm not a good Jewess either, I admit. Haven't, been to temple in years-that would have handicapped Val too much, professionally-but I could never bring myself to convert. Nor did he want me to." She left tacit the obvious, that his faith was probably mostly on his lips. Reading history, I have seen how tolerance has grown in the World Protectorate since its early days after the Armageddon War. But the time will be long yet before a professed non-Christian, not to mention an outright unbeliever, gets a spaceman's berth.

Daphne Asklund's background did help explain why her husband was aboard Uriel. The Corps doesn't exactly have a policy of giving its deviant members the most hazardous assignments. But they tend to volunteer for these, in the hope of advancement despite their social disadvantages or for deeper personality reasons. And then the tendency is to choose them from among qualified applicants, in compassion or a silent hope they may be more original and resourceful than average, or (I suppose) now and again a less honorable motive. Matt King, for instance, when young and foolish, had fathered a bastard. Or-I, commanding the relief mission, did not belong to the Absolute Christian Church but to a remnant of the old Kirk of Scotland; and kinfolk of mine, before I was born, were involved in the European Insurrection.

"Well," I said. "Well." My pipe and tobacco busied my hands. "Best we come to business. What do you want of me that lower echelons can't arrange for you? And why this visit, instead of a message or a phone call?"

"Only you can give me what I am after," she replied, "and you would not do it for a stranger. I don't expect you to say yes the first time."

You take for granted there will be more times, I thought. "Go on."

She drew breath. "Let me first describe myself. I hold full North American citizenship"-which had opened the ears of men who could grant access to me, a client national-"but was born and raised in Caribbea. My father was stationed there as an engineer for the Oceanic Power Authority. I grew up swimming, diving, sailing, hiking; or we'd hop to the Andes and mountaineer. I still do such things-did, with Val. My father got me entry to the University of Mexico, where I took a degree in microbiotics. Afterward I was an assistant to Sancho Dominguez-yes, I helped him develop his improvements in balanced life-support systems for spacecraft. That was how I met Val. He was on the team that tested them, and came to the laboratory for conferences. After we married, I had to resign my job-you know how spacemen get moved around, also on Earth-but Dr. Dominguez keeps me on retainer as a consultant and has called me in on several problems. That's the main reason we put off having children, social stigma be damned."

An oath on a woman's tongue seemed not altogether wrong: when tears glimmered forth on her eyelashes. Did the golden cross throw too harsh a light, or had she all at once felt that now they would have no children ever? She blinked, lifted her head, and went on defiantly:

"A peculiar life, hasn't it been? Almost like a female's before Armageddon." She flushed, though her tone stayed crisp. "Except for their moral looseness, of course. But please understand, sir-check me out later on-in spite of my sex, I'm athletic, used to handling emergencies, scientifically skilled, a specialist in the very thing your expedition is chiefly concerned with-

"Captain Sinclair, I want to go along."

It happened that our propaganda department had completed the official film on this task, and screened it that afternoon for me and my staff prior to release. I invited Daphne to join us. "Frankly, the reaction of a wife may show us changes we ought to make," I said. Hesitating: "You may prefer to wait, and watch at home when it's 'cast. They've doubtless included shots of your husband."