"Gardner Dozois - A Special Kind of Morning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

It was a null.

Goth sucked in a long breath, let it hiss out between his teeth. Heynith
remained impassive, but I could imagine his eyes narrowing behind the
thick lenses. My mind was totally blank for about three heartbeats, then,
surprised: a null! and I brought the gun barrel up, then,
uncomprehending: a null? and I lowered the muzzle. Blank for a second,
then: how? and trickling in again: how? Thoughts snarled into confusion,
the gun muzzle wavered hesitantly.

The null staggered across the clearing, weaving in slow figure-eights. It
almost fell down the talus bluff, one foot suspended uncertainly over the
drop, then lurched away, goaded by tropism. The null shambled backward
a few paces, stopped, swayed, then slowly sank to its knees.

It kneeled: head bowed, arms limp along the ground, palms up.

Heynith put his gun back in his lap, shook his head. He told us he'd be
damned if he could figure out where it came from, but we'd have to get rid
of it. It could spoil the ambush if it was spotted. Automatically, I raised
my gun, trained it. Heynith stopped me. No noise, he said, not now. He
told Goth to go out and kill it silently.

Goth refused. Heynith stared at him speechlessly, then began to flush.
Goth and Heynith had had trouble before. Goth was a good man, brave as
a bull, but he was stubborn, tended to follow his own lead too much, had
too many streaks of sentimentality and touchiness, thought too much to
be a really efficient cog.

They had disagreed from the beginning, something that wouldn't have
been tolerated this long if the Quaestors hadn't been desperate for men.
Goth was a devil in a fight when aroused, one of the best, and that had
excused him a lot of obstinacy. But he had a curious squeamishness, he
hadn't developed the layers of numbing scar-tissue necessary for guerrilla
work, and that was almost inevitably fatal. I'd wondered before,
dispassionately, how long he would last.

Goth was a hereditary fullsentient, one of the few connected with the
Quaestors. He'd been a cadet executive in Admin, gained access to old
archives that had slowly soured him on the Combine, been hit at the
psychologically right moment by increasing Quaestor agitprop, and had
defected; after a two-year proving period, he'd been allowed to participate
actively. Goth was one of the only field people who was working out of
idealism rather than hate, and that made us distrust him. Heynith also
nurtured a traditional dislike for hereditary fullsentients. Heynith had
been part of an industrial sixclone for over twenty years before joining the
Quaestors. His Six had been wiped out in a production accident, caused
by standard Combine negligence. Heynith had been the only survivor. The
Combine had expressed mild sympathy, and told him that they planned to