"Cowdrey, Albert E - Crux" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cowdrey Albert E)

ALBERT E. COWDREY

CRUX

DYEVA WATCHED THE EARTH revolve beneath her, vanish into banks of icy cirrus,
then emerge as a patchwork of blue sea and immobile, shining cumuli.

Bits of continents poked through the gaps as the airpacket swung out on a
hyperbolic curve. She had a glimpse of North America, with the Appalachian
Islands trailing into the Atlantic and the Inland Sea glimmering under the hot
March sun. Then the sixty-one passengers were shrouded in the lower cloud layer
and reading lights winked briefly on before they emerged again to flit like the
shadow of a storm over the broad Pacific.

A light meal was served, and during dessert the glint of Fujiyama Island on the
right with its attendant green islets announced that they were nearing the
Worldcity. They flashed into the dark red sun and the vast forest of China
leaped out of the glittering wavelets of the Yellow Sea. Fifty-five hundred
clicks was now too fast and one, two, three times the airpacket quivered as the
retros slowed it to a sedate thousand.

They were speeding over the green savannahs of the Gobi, famous for its herds of
wild animals. Of course they were too high and moving too fast to see the herds,
but a mashina in the forward wall of the cabin darkened, glittered briefly with
pinpoints of light, and filled with solid-seeming images of wapiti, elephants,
haknim, sfosura -- animals native and imported from other worlds -- shambling
over pool-dotted green plains where the immortal Khan once ruled.

Dyeva's pale, high-cheekboned face concentrated and her unblinking dark eyes
glinted with reflected images. Nine-tenths of the Earth --humanity's first home
-- was now a world of beasts. The ultimate achievement of the man called
Minister Destruction. Was it for this that twelve billion people had died?

In the sunset glow of Ulanor the Worldcity, Stef sprawled on his balcony wearing
a spotty robe and listening to the cries of vendors and the creak of wheels in
Golden Horde Street. He loved to loll here smoking kif in the last light during
all seasons except the brief, nasty Siberian winter.

A commotion in the street made him swing his bony legs off the battered lounge
chair. He tucked the mouthpiece of his pipe into a loop of hose from the censer
and shuffled in broken-strap sandals to the railing.

Down below, vendors' carts had pulled against the walls and a long line of
prisoners (blue pajamas, short hair, wrists and necks imprisoned in black
plastic kangs) shuffled past like a column of ants. Guards in widebrimmed
duroplast helmets strode along the line at intervals, swinging short whips
against the legs of laggards to hurry them on. The prisoners groaned and
somebody started to sing a prison song in Alspeke, the only language that all