"Dickson, Gordon - Dorsai 01 Dorsai Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

It came always at moments like mis, riding the shoulders of fatigue and some great emotion. He remembered it as a very young boy in the Academy chapel at evening service, half-faint with hunger after the long day of hard military exercises and harder lesson. The sunset, as now, came slanting in through the high windows on the bare, highly polished walls and the solidographs of famous battles inset in them. He stood among the rows of his classmates between the hard, low benches, the ranked male voices, from the youngest cadet to the deep man-voices of the officers in the rear, riding the deep, solemn notes of the RecessionalЧthat which was known as the Dorsai Hymn now, wherever man had gone, and which a man named Kipling had written the words of, over four centuries before.

. .. Far called, our navies melt away, On dune and headland sinks the fire. Lo! All our pomp of yesterday, Is one with Nineveh, and Tyre ...

As he had remembered it being sung at the burial service when his youngest uncle's ashes had been brought back from the slagged battlefield of Donneswort, on Freiland, third planet circling the star of Sirius.

... For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard, All valiant dust, that builds on dust And guarding, calls not thee to guard . . .

And he had sung with the rest, feeling then, as now, the final words in the innermost recesses of his heart.

... For frantic boast and foolish wordЧ Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

A chill shiver ran down his back. The enchantment was complete. Far and wide about him the red and dying light flooded the level land. In the farther sky the black dot of a hawk circled. But here by the fence and the high hurdles, he stood removed and detached, enclosed by some clear, transparent wall that set him apart from all the universe, alone, untouchable and enraptured. The inhabited worlds and their suns sank and dwindled in his mind's eye; and he felt the siren, deadly pull of that ocean of some great, hidden purpose that promised him at once fulfillment and a final dissolution. He stood on its brink and its waves lapped at his feet; and, as always, he strove to lift his foot and step forward into its depths and be lost forever; but some small part of him cried out against the self-destruction and held him back.

Then suddenlyЧas suddenly as it had comeЧthe spell was broken. He turned toward the craft that would take him home.

As he came to the front entrance, he found his father waiting for him, in the half-shadow leaning with his wide shoulders spread above the slim metal shaft of his cane.

"Be welcome to this house," said his father and straightened up. "You'd better get out of that uniform and into some man's clothes. Dinner will be ready in half an hour."

MAN

The men of the household of Eachan Khan Graeme sat around the long, shimmering slab of the dining board in the long and shadowy room, at their drinking after the women and children had retired. They were not all present, norЧshort of a minor miracleЧ was it ever likely that they would be, in this life. Of sixteen adult males, nine were off at the wars among the stars, one was undergoing reconstructive surgery at the hospital in Omalu, and the eldest, Donal's granduncle, Kamal, was quietly dying in his own room at the back of the household with an oxygen tube up his nose and the faint scent of the bay lilac to remind him of his Maran wife, now forty years dead. Sitting at the table were fiveЧof which, since three o'clock this afternoonЧDonal was one. Those others who were present to welcome him to bis adulthood were Eachan, his father; Mor, his elder brother, who was home on leave from the Friendlies; and his twin uncles lan and Kensie, who had been next in age above that James who had died at Donneswort. They sat grouped around the high end of the table, Eachan at its head, with his two sons on his right and his two younger twin brothers on his left.

"They had good officers when I was there," Eachan was saying. He leaned over to till Donal's glass, and Donal took it up automatically, listening with both ears.

"Freilanders all," said lan, the grimmer of the two dark twins. "They run to stiffness of organization without combat to shake them up. Kensie says Mara or Kultis, and I say why not?*'

"They have full companies of Dorsai there, I hear," said Mor, at Donal's right. The deep voice of Eachan answered from his left.

"They're show guards. I know of those. Why make a cake of nothing but icing? The Bond of Kultis likes to think of having an unmatched bodyguard; but they'd be fanned out to the troops fast enough in case of real trouble between the stars.1'

"And meanwhile," put in Kensie, with a sudden smile that split his dark face, "no action. Peacetime soldiering goes sour. The outfits split up into little cliques, the cake-fighters move in and an actual manЧa DorsaiЧbecomes an ornament."

"Good," said Eachan, nodding. Donal swallowed absently from his glass and the unaccustomed whiskey burned fiercely at the back of his nose and throat.

Little pricklings of sweat popped out on his forehead; but he ignored them, concentrating on what was being said. This talk was all for his benefit, he knew. He was a man now, and could no longer be told what to do. The choice was his, about where he would go to take service, and they were helping him with what knowledge they had, of the eight systems and their ways.

"... I was never great for garrison duty myself," Eachan was continuing. "A mercenary's job is to train, maintain and fight; but when all's said and done, the fighting's the thing. Not that everyone's of my mind. There are Dorsal and DorsalЧand not all Dorsal are Graemes."

"The Friendlies, nowЧ" said Mor, and stopped with a glance at his father, afraid that he had interrupted.

"Go on," said Eachan, nodding.

"I was just about to point out," said Mor, "there's plenty of action on AssociationЧand Harmony, too, I hear. The sects will always be fighting against each other. And there's bodyguard workЧ"

"Catch us being personal gunmen," said lan, whoЧ being closer in age to Mor man Mor's fatherЧdid not feel the need to be quite so polite, 'That's no job for a soldier."

"I didn't mean to suggest it," said Mor, turning to his uncle. "But the psalm-singers rate it high among themselves, and that takes some of their best talent. It leaves the field posts open for mercenaries,"