"Diane Duane - Harbinger 2 - Storm At Eldala" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

Gabriel went and got the third freestanding folding chair from his bunk cubicle, came back, set it up, and
fell to with the others. There was not a lot of discussion during this period, except about the sauce, which
had even Helm breaking out in a sweat within a matter of minutes.
"I thought you said humans developed a resistance to this kind of spicery," Enda said, looking from one
to the other of them.
"Eventually," Helm said.
Gabriel was unable to speak for the moment and resigned himself to suffering in silence and drinking
more wine.
Finally the edge of their hunger was blunted enough to talk over the afternoon's simulation, its high points
and low, and the ways in which Gabriel and Enda's reactions could improve to deal with the combat
situationsтАФparticularly those little ball bearing ships that had been attacking them. Ships of the same kind
had pressed Gabriel and Enda here in Corrivale and over in Thalaassa as well. All this side of the Verge
was buzzing with rumors of them now, ships of a strange construction, appearing from nowhere,
vanishing again. Nothing more had been seen of them around here, but this did not make Gabriel feel any
better about the area or their prospects in it.
"You didn't call me in for this practice session so close to our last one without reason," Helm said, wiping
his mouth with a paper cloth and folding it carefully.
"No," Gabriel said. "I think we should be thinking about leaving."
"I suppose it will come as something of a wrench for the locals," Enda said. "They have been coming to
depend on our custom . . ."
"And on us paying their outrageous prices," Gabriel muttered. "Well, no more."
"You have decided, then."
"Since when is it 'I'?" Gabriel asked.
Enda leaned back and sighed, giving him a look that might have translated as affectionate exasperation.
"Gabriel, I have been wandering around this part of the worlds for a long time. My opinion about where
we take Sunshine is simple. I don't care. I am delighted to defer to you in this regard. Where shall we
go?"
"Someplace with work," Helm said. "I mean, there's not much money in staying here. If work were the
only problem, you'd have angled your jets and moved right after we got back from Thalaassa, since I
don't think you want to work in this system any more. Well, about time, is all I can say."
"I'm surprised you haven't said anything about it before now," Gabriel said.
"Before you made up your mind?" Helm said as he put his feet up. "No point. You're still a typical
shipheadтАФall strong-and-silent stuff until it's actually time to move. Then get up and do it with no
warning. Which is smart. The best starfall is the unadvertised one."
"A masterly summation," Enda said. "Perhaps, Helm, you will tell us as well what Gabriel now has in
mind, for this has been a matter of interest to me also."
Helm snickered. "I'd go into futures trading if I could do that." He leaned back and looked at Gabriel.
"What's the word?"
Gabriel shook his head. "I haven't found out anything further here about the people responsible for getting
me cashiered," he said, "and the money in this system isn't worth the trouble of staying. At the same time I
hate getting too far away from the Grid, but it's also occurred to me that the need to be close to the data
had obscured a possibility . . . and I thought we might look into doing some infotrading."
Enda bowed her head, a "thinking" gesture. Gabriel glanced at Helm.
"Big profit margins there," said Helm. "Big risks, too. You have a software or hardware crash while
you're transiting with live stuff from a drivesat relay, or you run into some kind of transportation problem,
miss a starfall, drop the data, and suddenly there are people suing you from here back to the First
Worlds."
"Not somewhere I'd been planning to go at this point," said Gabriel.
"Not someplace you'd ever go again," Helm muttered, "if you lose a load of data. Lawyers . . ." He
shivered. "But the profit margins . . ." He looked as thoughtful as Enda. "Twenty to fifty percent on a