"Dickson, Gordon - Dorsai 03 Soldier, Ask Not Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"What about?" I said harshly.

"He didn't tell me."

I saw a way of handling her attack then. I started laughing at her. She stared at me for a second, then flushed again and began to look very angry indeed.

"I'm sorry." I throttled down on the laughter; and at the same time, secretly, I was in fact truly sorry. For all I was forced to fight her off, I liked Lisa Kant too well to laugh so at her. "But what else could we talk about except the old business of my taking over on the Final Encyclopedia again? Don't you remember? Padma said you couldn't use me. I was all oriented toward"-I tasted the word, as it went out of my mouth-' 'destruction.''

"We'll just have to take our chance on that." She looked stubborn. "Besides, it isn't Padma who decides for the Encyclopedia. It's Mark Torre, and he's getting old. He knows better than anyone else how dangerous it would be if he dropped the reins and there was no one there quickly to pick them up. In a year, in six months, the Project could founder. Or be wrecked by people outside it. Do you think your uncle was the only person on Earth who felt about Earth and the younger worlds' people the way he did?"

I stiffened, and a cold feeling came into my mind. She had made a mistake, mentioning Mathias. My face must have changed, too; because I saw her own face change, looking at me.

"What've you been doing?" Fury burst out in me all of a sudden. "Studying up on me? Putting tracers on my comings and goings?" I took a step forward and she backed instinctively. I caught her by the arm and held her from moving further. "Why chase me down now, after five years? How'd you know I was going to be here anyway?"

She stopped trying to pull away and stood still, with dignity.

"Let go of me," she said quietly. I did and she stepped back. "Padma told me you'd be here. He said that it was my last chance at you-he calculated it. You remember, he told you about ontogenetics."

I stared at her for a second, then snorted with harsh laughter.

"Come on, now!" I said. "I'm willing to swallow a lot about your Exotics. But don't tell me they can calculate exactly where anyone in the sixteen worlds is going to be ahead of time!"

"Not anyone!" she answered angrily. "You. You and a few like you-because you're a maker, not a made part of the pattern. The influences operating on someone who's moved about by the pattern are too far reaching, and too complicated to calculate. But you aren't at the mercy of outside influences. You have choice, overriding the pressures people and events bring to bear on you. Padma told you that five years ago!"

"And that makes me easier to predict instead of harder? Let's hear another joke."

"Oh, Tarn!" she said, exasperated. "Of course it makes you easier. It doesn't take ontogenetics, hardly. You can almost do it yourself. You've been working for five years now to get Membership in the Newsman's Guild, haven't you? Do you suppose that hasn't been obvious?"

Of course, she was right. I had made no secret of my ambitions. There had been no reason to keep them secret. She read the admission in my expression.

"All right," she went on. "So now you've worked your way up to Apprentice. Next, what's the quickest and surest way for an Apprentice to win his way into full Guild membership? To make a habit of being where the most interesting news is breaking, isn't that right? And what's the most interesting-if not important-news on the sixteen worlds right now? The war between the North and South Partitions on New Earth. News of a war is always dramatic. So you were bound to arrange to get yourself assigned to cover this one, if you could. And you seem to be able to get most things you want."

I looked at her closely. All that she said was true and reasonable. But, if so, why hadn't it occurred to me before this that I could be so predictable? It was like finding myself suddenly under observation by someone with high-powered binoculars, someone whose spying I had not even slightly suspected. Then I realized something.

"But you've only explained why I'd be on New Earth," I said slowly. "Why would I be here, though, at this particular party on Freiland?"

For the first time she faltered. She no longer seemed sure in her knowledge.

"Padma..." she said, and hesitated. "Padma says this place and moment is a locus. And, being what you are you can perceive, and are drawn to, loci-by your own desire to use them for your own purposes."

I stared at her, slowly absorbing this. And then, as suddenly as a sheet of flame across my mind leaped the connection between what she had just said and what I had heard earlier.

"Locus-yes!" I said tightly, taking a step toward her again in my excitement. "Padma said it was a locus here. For Graeme-but for me, too! Why? What does it mean for me?"

"I..." she hesitated. "I don't know exactly, Tarn. I don't think even Padma knows."

"But something about it, and me, brought you here! Isn't that right?" I almost shouted at her. My mind was closing on the truth like a fox on a winded rabbit. "Why did you come hunting me now then? At this particular place and moment, as you call it! Tell me!"

"Padma..." she faltered. I saw then with the almost blinding light of my sudden understanding that she would have liked to lie about this, but something in her would not let her.."Padma... only found out everything he knows now because of the way the Encyclopedia's grown able to help him. It has given him extra data to use in his calculations. And recently, when he used that data, the results showed everything up as more complex-and important. The Encyclopedia's more important, to the whole human race, than he thought five years ago. And the danger of the Encyclopedia's never being finished is greater. And your own power of destruction..."