"Anderson, Poul - Star Fox" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

"I ... Endre Vadсsz." The agile fingers disappeared in Heim's handshake. "Hungarian, but I have spent the last decade off Earth."
"Yes, I know," Heim said with care. "I saw you on a news program recently."
Vadсsz's lips writhed. He spat off the dock.
"You didn't get a chance to say much during the interview," Heim angled.
"No. They were cautious to mute me. 'So you are a musician, Mr. Vadсsz. You have worked your way by any means that came to hand, from star to star, bearing the songs of Mother Earth to the colonists and the non-humans. Isn't that interesting!'" The guitar cried out under a stroke.
"And you wanted to tell about New Europe, and they kept steering you from the subject. I wondered why."
"The word had come to them. From your precious American authorities, under pressure from the big brave World Federation. It was too late to cancel my announced appearance, but I was to be gagged." Vadсsz threw back his head and laughed, a coyote bark under the moon. "Am I paranoid? Do I claim I am being persecuted? Yes. But what if the conspiracy against me is real? Then does my sanity or lunacy make any difference?"
"M-m-m." Heim rubbed his chin and throttled back the emotions within himself. He was not an impetuous man. "How can you be sure?"
"Quinn admitted it, when I reproached him afterward. He said he had been told the station might lose its license if it, ah, lent itself to allegations which might embarrass the Federation in this difficult time. Not that I was too surprised. I had had talks with officials, both civil and military, since arriving on Earth. The kindest thing any one of them said was that I must be mistaken. But they had seen my proofs. They knew."
"Did you try the French? They'd be more likely to do something, I should think."
"Yes. In Paris I got no further than an assistant undersecretary. He was frightened of my story and would not refer me to anyone higher who might believe. I went on to Budapest, where I have kin. My father arranged for me to see the foreign minister himself. He was at least honest with me. New Europe was no concern of Hungary, which could in any event not go against the whole Federation. I left his office and walked for many hours. Finally I sat down in the dark by the Freedom Memorial. I looked at Imre Nagy's face, and it was only cold bronze. I looked at the figures of the martyrs, dying at his feet, and knew why no one will listen to me. So I got very drunk." Vadсsz reached for the bottle. "I have been drunk most of the time since."
Now we ask him! flared in Heim. His voice would not remain calm any longer; but Vadсsz didn't notice. "Your story, I gather from what bits and pieces have leaked past this 'unofficial official censorship'your story is that the people are not dead on New Europe. Right?"
"Right, sir. They fled into the mountains, every one. of them."
"The Haute Garance," Heim nodded. He had all he could do merely to nod. "Good guerrilla country. Lots of cover, most never mapped, and you can live off the land."
"You have been there!" Vadсsz set the bottle down and stared.
"Pretty often, while in the Navy. It was a favorite spot to put in for overhaul and planet leave. And then I spent four months in a stretch on New Europe by myself, recovering from this." Heim touched the mark on his forehead.
Vadсsz peered close through the dappled moonlight. "Did the Aleriona do that to you?"
"No. This was over twenty years ago. I bought it while we were putting down the Hindu-German trouble on Lilith, which .you're probably too young to remember. The skirmishes with Alerion didn't begin till later." Heim spoke absently. For this moment the drive and ferocity in him were overlaid by
Red roofs and steep narrow streets of Bonne Chance, winding down along the River Carsac to the Bale des Pecheurs, which lay purple and silver to the world's edge. Lazy days, drinking Pernod in a sidewalk cafe and lapping up the ruddy sunshine as a cat laps milk. When he got better, hunting trips into the highlands with Jacques Boussard and Toto Astier ... good bucks, open of heart and hand, a little crazy as young men ought to be. Madelon
He shook himself and asked roughly, "Do you know who is, or was, in charge?"
"A Colonel de Vigny of the planetary constabulary. He assumed command after the mairie was bombed, and organized the evacuation."
"Not old Robert de Vigny? My God! I knew him." Heim's fist clenched on the concrete. "Yes, in that case the war is still going on."
"It cannot last," Vadсsz mumbled. "Given time, the Aleriona will hunt everyone down."
"I know the Aleriona too," Heim said. He drew a long breath and looked at the stars. Not toward the sun Aurore. Across a hundred and fifty light-years, it would be lost to his eyes; and it lay in the Phoenix anyway, walled off from him by the heavy curve of Earth. But he could not look straight at the minstrel while he asked, "Did you meet one Madelon Dubois? That'd be her maiden name. I expect she's long married."
"No." Vadсsz's drink-slurred voice became instantly clear and gentle. "I am sorry, but I did not."
"Well" Heim forced a shrug. "The chances were way against it There's supposed to be half a million people on New Europe. Were the ... the casualties heavy?"
"I heard that Coeur d'Yvonne, down in Pays d'Or, was struck by a hydrogen missile. Otherwiseno, I do not believe so. The fighting was mostly in space, when the Aleriona fleet disposed of the few Federation Navy ships that happened to be near. Afterward they landed in force, but in uninhabited, areas at first, so that except for a couple of raids with nothing worse than lasers and chemical bombs, the other towns had time to evacuate. They had been called on to surrender, of course, but de Vigny refused and so many went off with him that the rest came too."
Damn it, 1 have got to keep this impersonal. At least till I know more. "How did you escape? The newscasts that mentioned you when you first arrived were vague about it. Deliberately, I suppose."
Vadсsz made the bottle gurgle. "I was there when the attack came," he said, thickly again. "The French commandeered a merchant vessel and sent it after help, but it was destroyed when scarcely above the atmosphere. There was also a miner in from Naqsa." He got the non-human pronunciation nearly right "You may know that lately there has been an agreement, the Naqsans may dig in Terre du Sud for a royalty. So far off, they had seen nothing, knew nothing, and cloud cover above Garance would keep them ignorant After a radio discussion, the Aleriona commander let them go, I daresay not wanting to antagonize two races at once. Of course, the ship was not allowed to take passengers. But I had earlier flitted down for a visit and won the captain's fancythat a human should be interested in his songs, and even learn a fewso he smuggled me aboard and kept me hidden from the Aleriona inspectors. De Vigny thought I could carry his messagehee, hee!" Vadсsz's laugh was close to hysteria. Fresh tears ran out of his eyes. "From Naqsa I had to, what you call, bum my way. It took time. And was all, all for nothing."
He laid the guitar across his knees, strummed, and sang low:
" 'Adieu, ma mie, adieu, man coeur,
Adieu, ma mie, adieu, man coeur,
Adieu, man espirance"
Heim took the bottle, then abruptly set it down so hard that it clanked. He jumped to his feet and began pacing. His shadow wove back and forth across the minstrel, his cloak fluttered against the moonlight on the water.
"Nej, ved fanden!" he exploded.
"Eh?" Vadсsz bunked up at him.
"Look, do you say you have proof?"
"Yes. I have offered to testify under drugs. And de Vigny gave me letters, photographs, a whole microfilm packet with every bit of information he could scrape together. But no one on Earth will admit it is genuine. Few will even look at it."
"I will," Heim said. The blood roared in his ears.
"Good. Good. Right here, the package is." Vadсsz fumbled in his soiled tunic.
"No, wait till later. I'll take your word for now. It fits in with every other scrap of fact I've come across."
"So I have convinced one man," Vadсsz said bitterly.
"More than that." Heim drew a long breath. "Look, friend, with due respect for youand I respect anyone who's had the guts to go out and make his own kind of lifeI'm not a raggedy-ass self-appointed troubadour. I'm boss and chief owner of Heimdal."
"The nuclear motor makers?" Vadсsz shook his head, muzzily. "No. Non. Nein. Nyet. You would never be here. I have seen your motors as far from home as the Rigel Domain."
"Uh-huh. Damn good motors, aren't they? When I decided to settle on Earth, I studied the possibilities. Navy officers who've resigned their commissions and don't want to go into the merchant fleet have much too good a chance of ending down among the unemployables. But I saw that whoever was first to introduce the two-phase control system the Aleriona invented would lock gravs on the human market and half the non-human ones. And ... I'd been there when Tech Intelligence dissected an Aleriona ship we captured in the set-to off Achemar. My father-in-law was willing to stake me. So today I'moh, not one of the financial giants. But I have ample money.
"Also, I've kept in touch with my Academy classmates. Some of them are admirals by now. They'll pay attention to my ideas. And I'm a pretty good contributor to the Libertarian Party, which means that Twyman will listen to me too. He'd better!"
"No." The dark tousled head moved from side to side, still drooping. "This cannot be. I cannot have found someone."
"Brother, you have." Heim slammed a fist into his palm with a revolver noise. A part of him wondered, briefly, at his own joy. Was it kindled by this confirmation that they were not dead on New Europe? Or the chance that he, Gunnar Heim, might personally short-circuit Alerion the damned? Or simply and suddenly a purpose, after five years without Connie? He realized now the emptiness of those years. No matter. The glory mounted and mounted. He bent down, scooped up the bottle with one hand and Vadсsz with the other. "Skхl!" he shouted to Orion the Hunter, and drank a draught that made the smaller man gape. "Whoo-oo! Come along, Endre. I know places where, we can celebrate this as noisily as we damn please. We shall sing songs and tell tales and drink the moon down and the sun up and then shall go to work. Right?"
"Y-yes" Still dazed, Vadсsz tucked his guitar under an arm and wobbled in Heim's wake. The bottle was not quite empty when Heim began "The Blue Landsknechts," a song as full of doom and hell as he was. Vadсsz hung the guitar from his neck and chorded. After that they got together on "La Marseillaise," and "Die Beiden Grenadiere," and "Skipper Bullard," and about that time they had collected a fine bunch of roughneck companions, and all in all it turned out to be quite an evening.