"David Drake - Men Like Us (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Carter unlocked the manacles and bound Smith's left wrist to another staple. "It was a good idea when
they chopped muties here every week," he said. "It's a good idea now. The ceremony reminds us all that
it's us against the world and all of us together. I'll take the ax if you like."
Smith, facing the panels, could not see the exchange. The air licked his neck and cheek as something
passed from hand to hand between the men. "Drop the walls," the chief ordered, "and turn on the light."
The pins locking together the corners of the hoardings slipped out. The panels arced down simultaneously
in a rush of air and a collective sigh from the Assembly. The purring of an electric motor awoke under the
platform, rising and becoming sibilant in the absence of competing sound. A taut drive belt moaned; then
the moan was buried in a sudden crackle, and white light played like terror across the upturned faces.
Smith twisted his head. The policemen stood in a line across the width of the platform. Carter, in the
middle, gripped the haft of afire ax. Its head was still darkened by flecks of red paint. He grinned at the
traveler. Behind the rulers of the village glared another burst of lightning between the static generator's
heads the polished casings of a pair of fusion bombs. No objects could have been more fittingly symbolic
of Moseby's power. The Van de Graaff generator provided a crude but effective way of converting
electricity to light. Its DC motor pulled a belt from which electrons were combed into one bomb casing.
The static discharges to the grounded casing were all the more spectacular for being intermittent.
"You still have a chance to save yourselves if you let me go," said Smith, shouting over the ripping arcs.
"There is no punishment too terrible for men who would use atomic power again, but you still have time
to flee!"
Carter's smile broadened, his teeth flickering in light reflected onto his face. He roared, "We dedicate this
victim to the power that preserves us all!" and he raised his ax.
"You fool," the traveler said quietly. He did not try to slide back from the block, even as he watched a
multiple discharge strobe the edge of the descending ax. The hungry steel caught him squarely, shearing
like a shard of ice through his flesh. His vertebrae popped louder in his ears than the hollow report of the
blade against the wood. The ax head quivered, separating all but a finger's breadth of the traveler's neck.
He blinked at Carter.
The policeman rocked his blade free. Static discharges sizzled behind him at three-second intervals.
Smith felt a line of warmth as his Blast-changed flesh knitted together again while the steel withdrew.
Still kneeling, the Changeling turned toward the crowd. "People!" he shouted. "Whatever it costs men
today, men tomorrow must know that nuclear power is death! It made this world what it is. It is the one
evil that cannot be tolerated, ever again! For Man's sake, for the world's-"
Screaming, Carter slammed the ax down on the traveler's temple. The blade bit to the helve. Smith
reached up with his right hand, tearing the staple from the flooring. He gripped the wood, and it splintered
as he drew the ax from where it was lodged in his bone. The Changeling stood, his head flowing together
like wax in a mold. His left wrist re-formed as the rawhide lashing cut through it.
Sparks like shards of sunlight clawed through the high windows of the power plan. That gush of light
died. The siren began to wind, higher and higher. The motor of the
Van de Graaf generator was speeding also, the current that drove it no longer controlled. The arcs were
a constant white sheet between the bomb casings. Someone-two figures-crossed the bridge from the
power plant. The blue glow from the building back lighted them.
"Flee!" Smith cried, lifting to the crowd the scarred hand he had thrown up two centuries before to the
flare of a hundred-megaton bomb. "Flee this abomination before it devours you-as it surely will, as it did
the world before this world!"
Carter screamed again and struck with his rifle butt, hurling the Changeling off the platform. Smith picked
himself up. The guards backed away from him, their eyes wide, their cocked bows advanced as
talismans and not threats.
The two figures on the bridge threw back their cloaks. The lapping arcs played across the half of
Kozinski's face and torso that was naked bone. The bare organs pulsed within, and his one eye darted
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