"Cook, Glen - Passage at Arms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

Some closet Torquemada had pointed at this antique, crowed, "Personnel carrier!" and ordered us aboard. The damned thing bucks, jounces, and lurches like some clanking three-legged iron stegosaurus trying to shake off lice. The dusky sorceress driving keeps looking back, her face torn by a wide ivory grin. This particular louse has chosen himself a spot to bite if she's ever stupid enough to stop.

The ride has its positive side. I don't have to listen to Westhause all the time. I can't. I can't keep tabs on the raid, either.

Why must I chase these incredible stories?

I remember a story about bullriders I did before the war. On Tregorgarth. Fool that I am, I felt compelled to live that whole experience, too. But then I could jump off the bull anytime I wanted.

I hear the Commander's chuckle and look his way. He's a dim, golden-haired silhouette against the moonlight. He's watching me. "They're only playing tonight," he says. "Drills, that's all. Just training drills." His laugh explodes like a thun-derous fart.

Squinting doesn't help me make out his expression. In the flash and flicker it jerks like the action in an ancient kinescope, or some conjured demon unsure what form to manifest. It doesn't settle. The Teutonic shape fills with shadowed hollows. The eyes look mad. Is he playing a game? Sometimes it's hard to tell.

I survey the others, Lieutenant Yanevich and Ensign Brad-ley. They haven't spoken since we entered the main gate. They hang on to their seats and count the rivets in the bucking deck or recall the high points of their leaves or say prayers. There is no telling what's going on in their heads. Their faces give nothing away.

I feel strange. I'm really doing it. I feel alone and afraid, and fall into a baffled, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here mood.

There is a big explosion up top. For an instant the ruins become an ink-line drawing of the bottommost floor of hell. Forests of broken brick pillars and rusty iron that present little resistance to the shock waves of the attackers' weapons. Every single one will tumble someday. Some just demand more at-tention.

The silent monument called Lieutenant Yanevich comes to life. "You should catch one of their big shows," he says. He cackles. It sounds forced, like a laugh given in charity to a bad joke. But maybe he's right to laugh. Maybe Climber men do have the True Vision. To them the war is one interminable shaggy-dog story. "You were too late for the latest Turbeyville Massacre."

Our driver swerves. Our right side tracks climb a pile of rubble. We crank along at half speed, with a thirty-degree list on. A band of spacers are trudging along the same trail, lurch-ing worse than the carrier, singing a grotesquely modified patriotic song. They are barely visible in their dress blacks. Only one man glances our way, his expression one of supreme disdain. His companions all hang on to one another, fore and aft, hand to shoulder, skipping along in a bizarre bunny hop. They could be drunken dwarfs heading for the night shift in a surreal coal mine. They all carry sacks of fruits and vegetables. They vanish into our lightless wake.

"Methinks they be a tad drunk," says Bradley, who is car-rying no mean load himself.

"We looked Turbeyville over on our way here," I say, and Yanevich nods. "/ saw enough."

The Fleet's big on-planet headquarters is buried beneath Turbeyville. It gets the best of the more serious drops.

The Commander and I had looked around while the dust was settling from the latest. The moons had been in conjunction nadir the previous night. That weakens the defense matrix, so the boys upstairs jumped through the hole with a heavy boomer drop. They replowed several square kilometers of often-turned rubble. They do it for the same reason a farmer plows a fallow field. It keeps the weeds from getting too tall.

The Commander says it was a tease strike. Just something to keep the edge on their boys and let us know our upstairs neighbors may come to stay someday.

The abandoned surface city lay immobilized in winter's tight grasp when we arrived. The iron skeletons of buildings creaked in bitter winds. All those mountains of broken brick lay beneath a rime of ice. In the moonlight they looked as though herds of migrating slugs had left their silvery trails upon them.

A handful of civilians prowled the wastes, hunting dreams of yesterday. The Old Man says the same ones come out after every raid, hoping something from the past will have worked to the surface. Poor Flying Dutchmen, trying to recapture an-nihilated dreams.

A billion dreams have already perished. This conflict, this furnace of doom, will consume a billion more. Maybe it feeds on them.

The carrier lurches. A track has missed its footing and we chum in a quarter-circle. Someone remarks listlessly, "We're almost there." I can't tell who. No one else cares enough to comment.

What I see over the carrier's armored flanks makes me wonder if the Old Man and I ever got out of Turbeyville. We might be Fliegende Hollandren ourselves, pursuing that infinite path through the ruins.

The Pits are another popular target. The boys upstairs can't resist. They're the taproot of Climber Command's logistics tree, the point where the strength of Canaan coalesces for transfer to the Fleet. The Pits spew men, stores, and materiel like a full-time geyser.

All they ever reclaim is leave-bound Climber people wearing the faces of concentration camp escapees.

I was planning to do an eyewitness account of the bold defenders of mankind. The plan needs revision. I haven't en-countered any of those. Climber people are scared all the time. They shy at shadows. The heroes are merely holonet fabrications. All these people want is to survive their next patrol; Their lives exist only within the mission's parameters. My companions have left their pasts in storage. They look no farther ahead than coming home. And they won't talk about that, for fear of jinxing it.

We've crossed some unmarked line. There's a difference! in the air. The smells are changing. Hard to recognize them amid this jouncing...