"C. J. Cherryh - Fever SeasonUC - Compilation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cherryh C J)

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God, fingered him before Boregy's eyes, declaring Chance Magruder another Sword agent, and Dimitri Romanov a third. Then the two men had demanded from Chamoun the most impossible things: a Sword connection, a conduit to Karl Fon back in Nev Hettek . . . a conduit other than Chance Magruder.
If Magruder knew the truth of it, Magruder would say that Chamoun had doubled, been turned by the enemy back upon his masters, the Sword of God, Karl Fon, and Magruder himself.
But Magruder didn't know. Chamoun had found no way to tell him. Magruder was sleeping with Anastasi Kalugin's mortal enemy, his sister Tatiana. Anastasi had sent Karl Fon a message, through Mondragon arid Boregy, and via Michael Chamoun, that he'd be willing to help an adversarial Sword factionЧagainst Magruder and Tatiana.
The whole convoluted mess was beyond Mike Chamoun's capacity for understanding, except in very simple terms: he knew he was a traitor twice over; he knew Anastasi would have him killed if, he failed to run his messages to Megary and back; he knew Mondragon was in no better a position and would cut out Chamoun's heart at the slightest balk. He knew Magruder would kill him quicker if Chance ever found out that there was a faction of the Sword now working hand in glove with Anastasi KaluginЧagainst Magruder personallyЧ and that this arrangement had been facilitated by one Michael Chamoun, thrice-compromised agent of the Sword of God.
He knew, because Magruder had promised Chamoun, on the night of the 24th Eve Ball when the Sword had attacked Nikolaev House, killing Kika and wounding her sister Rita, that Magruder would "take care of Romanov," the assumed culprit. So the gutted corpse on Chamoun's Detfish shouldn't have been a surprise.
But it had been. Magruder wasted no motion, no energy, no emotion. Magruder was here ostensibly to protect ChamounЧor had been. Thus, upon first seeing the corpse, Chamoun had thought that Magruder couldn't have done itЧwouldn't have done it. Filleting Romanov and leaving him on the Detfish just wasn't Chance's style.
It was a warning, since it hadn't been a frame-up. And there was no reason Magruder would send Chamoun such a warning, unless Chance had known, somehow, about the meeting with Mondragon and Cassie's fatherЧknown even while the meeting was taking place.
But he couldn't have; he just couldn't have. Magruder had been closeted with Tatiana all that night, while Chamoun stumbled through a strange city alone, looking for the slaver's stronghold called Megary and a Sword contact he didn't know by name or face, only by password and location to be sought and used in the direst emergency.
That night had been such an emergency. It still was one, in the heart of the young Adventist commoner from Nev Hettek thrust suddenly into a strange culture among his Revenantist betters, a pretender and an enemy in their midst.
Mike Chamoun stopped suddenly, having walked blindly all the way around the Signeury and over the bridge to the Revenantist College. Stopped before the wide and intimidating stairs to wipe the back of his velvet sleeve across his mouth. It came away damp with sweat, even though the day was cold with the surety of autumn and the promise of winter to come.
Up the stairs, on either side, were impossible statues: whales bearing wheels of fire, tails in each others' mouths; great, many-armed women with ornate crowns; the effigy of an angel with a sword, much smaller than the one guarding the harbor or the bridges. That sword, the sword of retribution, was partly drawn.
The angel's name was Michael, according to the ancient lore Chamoun was now learning by roteЧthe only pan of it which made sense to his stubborn Adventist soul. His new wife and her family and all of these believed in karmic debt and punishment befitting all crimes, meted out by an angry and nit-picking universe, as if God and all his minions were accountants of the soul.
Michael Chamoun believed that the enemy sharrh, the aliens who'd destroyed all tech on Merovin and isolated the world from the stars, would come again. All Adventists knew that punishment had already come once, with the arrival of
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the sharrh and the destruction they'd wrought. Adventists knew that the sharrh would come again, by which time mankind on Merovin had best be ready to fight to the death. Under that imperative of doom, all lesser imperatives paled. There was no right but the right of preparedness for the awful day of battle coming; there was no wrong but the possibility of failing to be ready to defend Merovin.
Two philosophies, incompatible, at odds. Mike Chamoun, caught between them, was now expected to mount these seemingly endless stairs each day and learn the Revenantist catechism of unending punishment on earth for misdeeds done in previous lives.
And in current lives. If his tutor at the College, Cassie's uncle the cardinal, should find out about Romanov, or Magruder, or even that Mike Chamoun was Sword of God, not all the Boregys in Merovingen could protect him from swift and didactic Revenantist retribution.
Before his eyes once more rose Romanov's shade, as the corpse did daily, haunting him. Romanov's death had been a warning, he knew. But he wasn't really sure from whom, and thus he didn't know why.
Trembling and sweating on the College steps in the chill wind, Mike Chamoun bit his lip and forced his legs to begin climbing. Into the monster's den, fool, he told himself, blinking dead Romanov's ghost away. You're no safer anywhere else than here. Not now. Not ever.
At that moment, if Chance Magruder had appeared, swinging down those steps as if he owned all of Merovingen, above and below, Chamoun would have told Chance all about Romanov and Mondragon and Vega Boregy and Megary: about the whole mess that Chamoun was in. He'd have thrown himself on Magruder's mercy and taken his chances, just to be freed of Romanov's ghost.
But Minister Magruder wasn't there, so Chamoun couldn't. He could only climb the stairs and pull the silken rope that rang the College doorbell. Which was a good thing, in its way. Throwing himself on Magruder's mercy was a fine and honorable thought, but a foolish deed. His Excellency Chance
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Magruder, Minister of Nev Hettek Trade and Tariffs and strategic officer for the Sword of God in Merovingen, had no mercy, none at all.
Halfway into today's lesson. Cardinal Ito Tremaine Boregy still couldn't keep his mind on the student or the ritual, although this was a private lesson and his pupil was his nephew-in-law, Mike Chamoun.
He said to the student, an Adventist to his irredeemable core, "And now, m'ser, we shall begin to contemplate the rules of conduct as they are known to the lower tiers. The Revenantist theology that makes us relevant to the everyday lives of Merovingians." The cardinal walked to his blackboard, chalk in hand.
The single student's eyes followed, his young sharp-faced head turning slowly above its mud-colored velvet as if Chamoun were no more than a puppet.
Ito noticed that he had chalk dust on his claret velvet sleeve, and brushed at it absently as he said, "A religion must have something to offer its proponents and practitioners, day by day. It must prove itself in the world. It must, in short, ring true. In the language of the streets, Revenantism reaches its finest moment."
Ito began to write:
/. What goes around, comes around.
2. Play today, pay tomorrow.
3. Evil is as evil does.
4. What you give is what you get.
5. No bad deed goes unpunished, if not in this life, then in the next.
6. No one gets out of here alive.
7. Be here now until you're there then.
8. The punishment fits the crime.
9. God doesn't give free throws.
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10. The only iking worth saving is your soul.
And when he'd finished writing, he added, "To these axioms that sustain the lower classes, we have added the unwritten one, for men like yourselfЧforeigners, skeptics, unredeemed of every sort: A mind blown is a mind shown.
The student shifted in his seat. Cassie Boregy's husband was a creature of mercantilist opportunity, as well as an Adventist sloth from Nev Hettek. His sharp features, so clearly un-Merovingian in their virility and their boldness; the gleam in his unrepentant eyes; the set of his shouldersЧall showed this was a man in need of humbling. Nowhere in Vega Boregy's newest pawn (and affront to the laws of God) did Ito Tremaine Boregy see anything more than a piece of walking karma.
But that was precisely the reason Ito had undertaken the boy's conversion personally: Michael Chamoun could be a manifestation of Instant Karma, the only sort that worried Ito, a cardinal, not a mere priest.
Ito was a pragmatic man, and he knew trouble when he saw it. Instant karma was the sort that tumbled ruling houses into the sea, and why Vega couldn't see beyond his own aristocratic nose into the danger that this youth represented was beyond Ito's understanding. Therefore, in some way or another, the youth's presence here was an act of God.
Not the Httle, mean god who tortured the waifs in Merovingen-below, keeping them poor and hungry, but the great God of the noble bouses, who determined fate by more temporal means: the quality of one's maneuvering, the depth of one's ruthlessness, the insight of one's planning. This was the real meaning of karma: do unto others before they do unto you. Because they would. And did, daily among Ito's flock, the well-heeled and the conscienceless.
For these, Ito devised expiative punishments: fines payable to the College that, when paid, negated a sin before it became karmic debt. Ito was the best fundraiser in the College, and
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his sense of the monetary value of a piece of potential karmic evil was unsurpassed.
Therefore, he'd taken on the conversion of Michael Chamoun, and he was going to do it right. When he finished with Cassie's husband, the boy was going to have the fear of GodЧor at least of the Revenantist CollegeЧin him. And Vega would have a son-in-law broken to his will.