"Anderson, Poul - Stars Are Also Fire, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

Valanndray was still there, toying with orbital mechanics variations. He turned to confront the pilot. His face, fine-boned, ivory-pale, lifted ten centimeters above Kenmuir's. On this crossing he had laid flath-boyancy aside and clothed his litheness in a coverall; but it was of deep-blue perlux, and phosphorescent light-points blinked in the fabric. Recorded snow blew behind him, recorded wind beneath the musical voice: "So, Captain?"
Kenmuir halted. Tall for an Earthling, he had long ceased letting Lunarian height overawe him. "A surprise. You won't like it, I'm afraid." He recited the message. Within him, it sang.
Valanndray stood motionless. "In truth, a reversal," he said at length, tonelessly. "What propose you to do?"
"Set you off with the supplies and equipment, and make for Luna. What else?"
"Abandonment, then."
"No, wait. Naturally, we'll call in and explain the situation, if they don't already know at headquarters."
The big oblique eyes narrowed. "Nay. The Federals would retrieve it and learn."
Irritation stirred. Kenmuir had simply wanted to be tactful. Their months together had given him an impression that his associate was in some ways, down below the haughtiness, quite woundable. Valanndray might have felt hurt that the other man was so ready to leave him behind.
Just the same, Kenmuir had grown tired of hearing coldly hostile remarks about the World Federation, and this one was ridiculous. Granted, Lunarians had not rejoiced when their world came back under the general government of humankind. Resentment persisted in many, perhaps most, to this day. ButЧname of reason!Чhow long before they were born had the
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change taken place? And their wish for "independence" was flat-out wrong. What nation-states bred while they existed, as surely as contaminated water bred sickness, had been war.
"The message went inH clear because it must, if we were to read it," Kenmuir said. "We don't have cryptographic equipment aboard, do we? Very well, it's in the databases now. Who cares? If somebody does notice it, will he send for the Peace Authority? I hardly think the lady Lilisaire is plotting rebellion."
Recognizing his sarcasm, he made haste to adopt mildness: "Yes, we'll notify the Venture, though I daresay she has already. It ought to dispatch another ship and teammate for you. Within a week or two, I should imagine."
He was relieved to see no anger. Instead, Valanndray regarded the spacefarer as if studying a stranger. He saw a man drably clad, lean to the point of gauntness, with big bony hands, narrow face and jutting nose, grizzled sandy hair cut short, lines around the mouth and crow's-feet at the gray eyes. The look made Kenmuir feel awkward. He was amply decisive when coping with nature, space, machines, .but when it came to human affairs he could go abruptly shy.
"The lords of the Venture will be less than glad," Valanndray said.
Kenmuir shaped a smile. "That's obvious. Upset plans, extra cost." When everything was marginal to begin with, he thought. The associated companies and < colonists didn't really compete with the Space Service ; and its sophotects. They couldn't. What kept them going was, basically, subsidy, from the former aristocratic families and from lesser Lunarians who traded sk with them out of Lunarian pride. And still their | enterprises were dying away, dwindling like the num-4; bers of the Lunarians themselves. ... * He forced matter-of-factness: "But the lady Lilisaire, she's a power among them, maybe more than you or I know." His pulse hammered anew.
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Valanndray spread his fingers. A Terran would have shrugged shoulders. "She can prevail over them, yes. Go you shall, Captain."
"I, I'm sorry," Kenmuir said.
"You are not," Valanndray retorted. "You could protest this order. But nay, go you will, and at higher thrust than a single Earth gravity."
Why that grim displeasure? He and Kenmuir had shaken down into an efficient partnership, which included getting along with one another's peculiarities. A newcomer would need time to adjust. But the Earthman felt something else was underlying.
Jealousy, that Lilisaire wanted Kenmuir and not him, though Kenmuir was an alien employee and Valanndray kin to her, a member of her phyle? How well the pilot knew that tomcat Lunarian vanity; how well he had learned to steer clear of it.
Or a different kind of jealousy? Kenmuir pushed the question away. Just once had Valanndray seemed to drop an erotic hint Kenmuir promptly changed the subject, and it arose no more. Quite possibly he had misunderstood. Who of his species had ever seen the inmost heart of a Lunarian? In any case, they had a quivira to ease them. Kenmuir did not know what pseudo-experiences Valanndray induced for himself in the dream box, nor did the Earthman talk about his own.
"If you loathe the idea, you can come back with me," he said. "You're entitled." On the Moon, obligations between underlings and overlings had their strength, but it was the strength of a river, form and force incessantly changeable.
Valanndray shook his head. Long platinum locks fell aside from ears that were not convoluted like Kenmuir's. "Nay. I have sunken my mind in yonder asteroid for weeks, hypertext, simulations, the whole of available knowledge about it. None can readily replace me. Were I to forsake it, that would leave the Federation so much the richer, so much the more powerful, than my folk."
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Kenmuir recalled conversations they had had, and dealings he had had with others, on Luna, Mars, the worldlets of the Belt, moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Few they were, those Lunarian spacefarers and colonists, reckoned against Terrankind. Meager their wealth was, reckoned against that which the machines held in the name of Terrankind. But if they leagued in anger and raised all the resources at their beck, it could bring a catastrophe like none that history knew.
No, hold on. He was being fantastical. Ignore Valanndray's last words. No revolt was brewing. War was a horror of the far past, like disease. "That's right loyal of you," Kenmuir replied.
"I hold my special vision of the future," Valanndray told him. "Come the time, I want potency in council. Here I gain a part of it." The admission was thoroughly Lunarian. "I regret losing your help, in this final phase of our tour, but go, Captain, go."
"Uh, whatever the reason the lady's recalling me, it must be good. For the good ofЧof LunaЧ"
Valanndray laughed. Kenmuir flushed. The good of Luna? Hardly a Lunarian concept. At most, the good of the phyle. Still, that could entail benefit for the entire race.
"As for me," Valanndray said, "I will think on this. We can finish our game later. Until evenwatch, Captain." He laid right palm on left breast, courtesy salute, and strolled out the door.
Kenmuir stood a while alone. Lilisaire, Lilisaire!
But why did she want unimportant him at her side?
Because of the Habitat? Remote and preoccupied as he had been, he had caught only fugitive mentions of that project. It seemed the Federation government was definitely going to go through with it. That would rouse fury on LunaЧa feat of engineering that would make mass immigration from Earth possibleЧbut what in the manifold cosmos could he do?
What should he do? He was no rebel, no ideologue, nothing but a plain and peaceful man who worked in the Venture of Luna because it had some berths for
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Terrans who would rather be out among the stars than anywhere else.
Let him shoot a beam to Ceres and ask for an update on Solar System news, with special reference to the Habitat.
No. A chill traversed him. That call, hard upon what had just passed, might draw notice. Or it might not. But if the cybercosm, ceaselessly scanning its databases in search of significant correlations, turned this one upЧ
Then what? He did not, repeat not, intend anything illegal.
Still, best if he didn't get that update. Wait till he reached Luna, maybe till he and Lilisaire were secluded.
Kenmuir realized that he was bound for his stateroom.
To reach it felt almost like a homecoming. This space was his, was him. Most of his recreations he pursued elsewhere, handball in the gym, figurine sculpture in the workshop, whatever. Here he went to be himself. From the snip's database he retrieved any books and dramas, music and visual art, that he wished. He thought his thoughts and relived his memories, uninterrupted, unseen if maybe he breathed a name or beat a fist into an open hand. A few flat pictures clung to the bulkheads. They showed the Highland moor of his childhood; the Grand Canyon of the Colorado as photographed by him; his parents, years dead; Dagny Beynac, centuries dead.. . .
From a cabinet he took a bottle and poured a short brandy. He wasn't given to solitary drinking, or indulgence in glee or brainstir or other intoxicants. He severely rationed both his time in the quivira and the adventures he dreamed there. He had learned the hard way that he must. Now, though, he wanted to uncoil.
He took his chair, leaned back, put feet on desk. The position was more relaxing under full Earth
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weight. Yes, bound for Luna, he would most certainly go at that acceleration or better. Lilisaire's words implied he was free to squander the energy. So he wouldn't need the centrifuge to maintain muscle tone. Of course, he would keep up his martial arts and related exercises. As for the rest of his hours, he could read, play some favorite classic shows, andЧand, right now, call up Bach's Second Brandenburg Concerto. His tastes ran to the antique.