"Baker,_Kage_-_Noble_Mold" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)

_Request relates Priority,_ I replied. _Resolving now. Requisition Sim ParaN Phenom re: Priority resolution?_
That gave them pause. They verified and counterverified my authority, they re-scanned the original orders and mulled over their implications. At least, I guessed they were doing that, as the blue screen flickered. Feeling I had them on the run, I pushed for a little extra, just for my own satisfaction: _Helpful Priority specify mutation. What? Why?_
Pause while they verified me again, then the bright letters crawled onscreen in a slow response:
_Patent Black Elysium._
I fell back laughing, though it wasn't exactly funny. The rest of the message followed in a rapid burst: _S-P Requisition approved. Specify Tech support?_
I told them what I needed.
_Estimate resolution time Priority Gold?_
I told them how long it would take.
_Expecting full specimen consign & report then, _was the reply, and they signed off.
* * * *
"Why don't they ever put convenient handles on these things?" grumbled Mendoza. She had one end of the transport trunk and a shovel; I had the other end of the trunk and the other shovel. It was long after midnight and we were struggling up the rocky defile that led to the Kasmali residence.
"Too much T-Field drag," I explained.
"Well, you would think that an all-powerful cabal of scientists and businessmen, with advance knowledge of every event in recorded history _and_ infinite time in which to take every possible advantage of said events, _and_ every possible technological resource at their command, _and_ unlimited wealth -- " Mendoza shifted the trunk again and we went on -- "You'd think they could devise something as simple as a recessed handle."
"They tried it. The recess cuts down on the available transport space inside," I told her.
"You're kidding me."
"No. I was part of a test shipment. Damn thing got me right in the third cervical vertebra."
"I might have known there'd be a reason."
"The Company has a reason for everything, Mendoza."
We came within earshot of the house, so conversation ended. There were three big dogs in the yard before the door. One slept undisturbed, but two put up their heads and began to growl. We set down the trunk: I opened it and from the close-packed contents managed to prize out the Hush Unit. The bigger of the dogs got to his feet, preparing to bark.
I switched on the unit. Good dog, what a sleepy doggie, he fell over with a woof and did not move again. The other dog dropped his head on his paws. Dog Number Three would not wake at all now, nor would any of the occupants of the house, not while the Hush Field was being generated.
I carried the unit up to the house and left it by the dogs, Mendoza dragging the trunk after me. We removed the box of golden altar vessels and set off up the hill with it.
The amazing mutated vine was pretty sorry-looking now, with most of its branches clipped off in the attempt to appease Mendoza. I hoped to God their well-meaning efforts hadn't killed it. Mendoza must have been thinking the same thing, but she just shrugged grimly. We began to dig.
We made a neat hole, small but very deep, just behind the trunk and angled slightly under it. There was no way to hide our disturbance of the earth, but fortunately the ground had already been so spaded up and trampled over that our work shouldn't be that obvious.
"How deep does this have to be?" I panted when we had gone about six feet and I was in the bottom passing spadefuls up to Mendoza.
"Not much deeper; I'd like it buried well below the root ball." She leaned in and peered.
"Well, how deep is that?" Before she could reply my spade hit something with a metallic clank. We halted. Mendoza giggled nervously.
"Jesus, don't tell me there's _already_ buried treasure down there!"
I scraped a little with the spade. "There's something like a hook," I said. "And something else." I got the spade under it and launched it up out of the hole with one good heave. The whole mass fell on the other side of the dirt heap, out of my view. "It looked kind of round," I remarked.
"It looks kind of like a hat -- " Mendoza told me cautiously, bending down and turning it over. Abruptly she yelled and danced back from it. I scrambled up out of the hole to see what was going on.
It was a hat, all right, or what was left of it; one of the hard-cured leather kind Spain had issued to her soldiers in the latter half of the last century. I remembered seeing them on the presidio personnel. Beside the hat, where my spade-toss had dislodged it, was the head that had been wearing it. Only a brown skull now, the eyes blind with black earth. Close to it was the hilt of a sword, the metallic thing I'd hit.
"Oh, _gross!_" Mendoza wrung her hands.
"Alas, poor Yorick," was all I could think of to say.
"Oh, God, how disgusting. Is the rest of him down there?"
I peered down into the hole. I could see a jawbone and pieces of what might have been cavalry boots. "Looks like it, I'm afraid."
"What do you suppose he's doing down there?" Mendoza fretted, from behind the handkerchief she had clapped over her mouth and nose.
"Not a damn thing nowadays," I guessed, doing a quick scan of the bones. "Take it easy: no pathogens left. This guy's been dead a long time."
"Sixty years, by any chance?" Mendoza's voice sharpened.
"They must have planted him with the grapevine," I agreed. In the thoughtful silence that followed I began to snicker. I couldn't help myself. I leaned back and had myself a nice sprawling guffaw.
"I fail to see what's so amusing," said Mendoza.
"Sorry. Sorry. I was just wondering: do you suppose you could cause a favorable mutation in something by planting a dead Spaniard under it?"
"Of course not, you idiot, not unless his sword was radioactive or something."
"No, of course not. What about those little wild yeast spores in the bloom on the grapes, though? You think they might be influenced somehow by the close proximity of a gentleman of Old Castile?"
"What are you talking about?" Mendoza took a step closer.
"This isn't a cancer cure, you know." I waved my hand at the vinestock, black against the stars. "I found out why the Company is so eager to get hold of your Favorable Mutation, kid. This is the grape that makes Black Elysium."
"The dessert wine?" Mendoza cried.
"The very expensive dessert wine. The hallucinogenic controlled substance dessert wine. The absinthe of the 24th century. The one the Company holds the patent on. That stuff. Yeah."
Stunned silence from my fellow immortal creature. I went on:
"I was just thinking, you know, about all those decadent technocrats sitting around in the Future getting bombed on an elixir produced from..."
"So it gets discovered here, in 1844," said Mendoza at last. "It isn't a genetically engineered cultivar at all. And the wild spores somehow came from...?"
"But nobody else will ever know the truth, because we're removing every trace of this vine from the knowledge of mortal men, see?" I explained. "Root and branch and all."