"David Drake - RCN Leary 1- With The Lightnings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Even Kostroma's seawater tasted strange on Daniel's tongue. It was tinged with a different mixture of salts and less of them in total than the fluid that lapped the shore of Bantry.
Anger and Uncle Stacey's stories had taken Daniel Leary far from home. Standing here in the night, though, he knew he'd found another home: the stars in all their wonderful profusion.

Adele nibbled through the dozen thin slices of meats and vegetables set before her on a wooden skewer with charred tips. The provisions merchant had listed the ingredients in a voice pitched to be heard by the aristocrat from a minor island seated across from him. If Adele heard correctly-gathering information was instinctive for her, both a blessing and a curse-one of the slices was "poisonous love-apple."
She smiled despite herself. "Poisonous" would cover most of the love affairs she'd seen played out; though that was a subject of which she had only academic knowledge or interest.
They'd consumed twenty-two of the menu's thirty dishes. Because Adele had never attended a Kostroman banquet before, she hadn't realized each dish would be a separate course. At this rate it would be well after midnight before the gathering concluded.
Most of the guests were accompanied by an aide who stood near the main doorway, chatting with others in the same boring circumstances. If a message came for the guest, a palace servant informed the aide, who in turn passed the information on to his or her principal. Occasionally a diner rose after such a consultation and left the salon to deal with the crisis.
Much more frequently a guest staggered out to the temporary toilet facilities curtained off in the hallway. Kostroman society was very advanced in many respects, but Adele considered the sanitary arrangements of even the ruling class to be barely minimal.
The menu hadn't listed the ocean of wines, beers, and distilled liquor that flowed with the food, probably because that went without saying on Kostroma. Adele had neither a taste nor the head for alcohol; she would have drunk with great care even if this function were not a matter of her duty as a member of the Elector's staff.
Part of the reason for the banquet was to honor the two delegations bidding for Kostroma's friendship-and to put them on their mettle by bringing them face to face in public. Equally important from the Elector's point of view was to display his power to the politically important folk of Kostroma. Most of the two hundred guests were Kostromans being shown to be subservient to Walter III.
Because collating information was Adele's life as well as her vocation, she found the actual order of precedence at the tables to differ strikingly from that planned in the original guest list. Something had gone seriously wrong within the ruling coalition.
Kostroman political life was a shuffling of clans which were more or less congruent with individual islands. Kostroma Island was a melting pot where virtually all the politicians lived, but those worthies had their power bases elsewhere on the planet.
Walter III had come to power through an alliance of his Hajas clan with the chief personages of the Zojiras, another large clan. Both major parties had collaterals, minor clans that looked to them for leadership and protection and which in turn could supply support and manpower.
The winning coalition had shared out offices following Walter's victory. Adele's staff was a typical mixture of folk owing allegiance to either Hajas or Zojira, granted their places for reasons that had nothing to do with their enthusiasms or their ability to make a library function.
Adele didn't know the banquet guests by sight-she knew almost no one on the planet-but all of them wore their clan colors as collar flashes or in their headgear. The Zojiras and their collaterals were consistently three places below where they'd been seated in the original plan. The change was minor in one sense-the food was the same, whichever chair the diner sat in. In context the change was comparable to shifting a decimal point in an equation.
The woman to Adele's immediate right was a Zojira collateral; her beret was quartered orange and horizon blue, but the pompon topping it was Zojira black and yellow to indicate affiliation. She was well-dressed and had put more emphasis on style than on cost, but Adele knew nothing else about her. The woman had sat with rage mottling her complexion throughout the meal. At a guess, she should have been sitting above the Hajas supporter now two places to her right.
Between the silently contemplative Markos and the silently furious woman on the other side, Adele was having a quiet meal. Her lips quirked in a tiny smile. She couldn't complain about being bored during dinner either. Boredom was one of those things that improved with absence.
"Now, many of my competitors make the sauce from any fish at all," whined the provisions merchant. "Fish parts I suspect in-"
Leonidas Zojira, the head of the clan, leaped to his feet at the high table. The servant behind him prevented his chair from hitting the floor with a crash. Not to be balked of a scene, Leonidas picked up his plate and hurled it into the serving tray. He stalked toward the hallway doors.
As though Leonidas had snagged a line, scores of other diners got up. All wore black and gold either as their primary colors or as quarterings. The woman beside Adele stood, leaned forward deliberately, and spat in the dish of her Hajas rival before she joined the exodus from the Grand Salon.
"Rather to be expected," Markos said to Adele in tones of suave amusement. The trouble appeared to have restored his good humor. "The whole history of Kostroma indicates that no alliance lasts much longer than the common enemy. A mercurial folk, the Kostromans."
The table decorations were stemless flowers floating in silver bowls. In reflection, Adele saw the Alliance spy waggle a finger toward the main doors. A youngish woman came toward him from the gaggle of aides there. She wore Kostroman business dress, out of place to a degree among the bright livery of those with whom she'd been waiting.
The woman bent over Markos and whispered in his ear. He nodded solemnly and said to Adele, "You'll have to excuse me, Mistress Mundy. My secretary tells me I have an urgent call. Perhaps we'll meet again."
"Good day," Adele said without inflection. She watched Markos leave the hall with a lengthening stride.
The Cinnabar "Navy Office" functionary was already out the door because he hadn't bothered with the fiction of being summoned by an aide. If Adele hadn't seen Markos's gesture, even she might have accepted his charade at face value.
The Alliance and Cinnabar delegates were frantically signaling for their aides. Le Golif of the Aglaia looked startled and concerned. He wasn't a diplomat, and he had no idea what had happened.
Adele went back to the dish which had been put before her at the instant of the Zojira exodus. It was sliced vegetables in a very spicy red sauce; she wouldn't have guessed the sauce had anything to do with fish were it not for the merchant's description.
She didn't suppose the fuss would affect her task one way or the other. Vanness, the only assistant she'd have made an effort to keep, was a Hajas; by the same token, Bracey was a Zojira collateral and she'd already dismissed him herself.
Kostroman politics were a concern for foreign intelligence agents, not for librarians. . . .

Aircars were common enough on Kostroma that the sound of one approaching probably wouldn't have interrupted the drinking if Lt. Mon hadn't recognized the fan note. "That's one of ours, by God!" he said.
The midshipmen sat at the end of the table nearer the balcony, but they'd drunk themselves almost legless. The three lieutenants proved their greater capacity, professional as well as alcoholic, by getting onto the balcony almost simultaneously despite the litter of chairs, glasses, and Midshipman Cassanos on the floor behind them.
The Aglaia carried a quartet of ducted-fan aircars, an unusually high number for a naval vessel but in keeping with the expected mission of a communications ship. The duty car, 73 on the bulbous forward fan nacelle, idled up the street while a rating checked building fronts with a spotlight.
"Here we are!" Mon bellowed. The balcony flexed; Daniel hadn't thought more than two people would fit on it, but that had been when he was sober. "Aglaia!"
The spotlight swept them at leg level, illuminating but not blinding the officers. The car angled closer, keeping slightly above second-floor level.
"Sir!" called the petty officer behind the light. He bellowed to be heard over the fans' whooshing intake. "Lieutenant Mon is to take a cutter up and launch a message cell. The middies are to round up crewmen on leave, and Lieutenant Weisshampl will hold the ship in readiness for the captain's return!"
Daniel relaxed-as much as anyone could, squeezed so tight that the railing creaked. Something had happened, but it couldn't have been too serious if Le Golif himself hadn't reported back. This was diplomatic excitement, not the kind of emergency in which lives or the very ship herself depend on fast action. It was more important to finish a formal dinner.
"Bring the boat close," Weisshampl ordered with the decisiveness expected of a naval officer. "We'll board from here."
The aircar dipped toward them. If the crewmen aboard had an opinion of the idea, it wasn't theirs to question.
Weisshampl put her right foot on the low railing. The railing toppled with her into the street ten feet below. Weisshampl rotated a perfect 270 degrees in the air, landing flat on her back on the stone pavement.
The aircar bobbled back and dropped to the street. "Cancel that order!" Weisshampl roared. She started to get up, then turned to vomit so that the street's slight camber would carry the ejecta away from her uniform.
Daniel nodded approvingly as he clung to the transom. Weisshampl was a real professional, no question about it.
He turned. The stewards were shepherding Cassanos and Whelkine down the stairs. The gentleness of the process was a positive commentary on the way the Aglaia's ratings regarded the midshipmen. Lt. Mon walked behind them alone. He had a sort of funereal grace, holding a glass of brandy with the dignity owed a communion chalice.
Hogg eyed the debris of the party. There was no breakage except for the railing, some glasses, and a chair. The latter hadn't been in good shape even before Daniel trampled it on his way to the balcony. "In twenty minutes we'll have it clean as your mother's parlor, sir," he said judiciously. "That's if we have a clear field, I mean."
He quirked an eyebrow at Daniel to drive home the point that the master would be very much in the way of the clean-up.
The aircar's crew had loaded Lt. Weisshampl onto the open vehicle's middle seat. The midshipmen entered the street under their own power, though stewards were hovering nearby. Cassanos raised his foot to step over the car's low side. He lost his balance, pirouetted on one foot, and fell backward into the rearmost section. Whelkine toppled directly on top of him.
Mon entered the middle section. His drink sloshed as he eased Weisshampl to the side. "Whee!" cried Midshipman Whelkine. "I've got brandy on my butt!"
The dinner might have loosened Whelkine up to a useful extent, Daniel thought. Assuming she didn't hang herself out of embarrassment when she sobered in the morning.
"Home, James!" Weisshampl commanded from where she lay. The aircar skidded forward on surface effect, then rose in a turn with the fans screaming.
Petty officers would have to coddle the midshipmen who'd be nominally in command of the parties calling in leave-men, but that wouldn't be either a problem or the first time. Daniel could remember the night only the grip of a husky rating on each elbow had kept him navigating the Strip outside Harbor #3, searching for no-shows who were a great deal less drunk than he was.