"Thomas A. Easton - Organic Future 5 - Seeds of Destiny" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

She swung back toward him, something in her hands. He shied away from
her,
stepping backward, thumping into a passerby, lurching forward again, and she
thrust that something against his chest. "Here." Suddenly he was holding a
smooth-sided cylinder and staring at a spray of fuzzy green and white-edged,
yellow-centered violet.
Oh, no, he thought. Fear washed over him even as his fingertips stroked
the
side of the cylinder and told him it was made of some smooth ceramic. It was
surely a local product, made of Martian soil. No one shipped raw clay or
pottery
between the worlds, not even in an era when Q drives tapped the raw energy of
space itself to power rockets.
No one made flowerpots either, and here was the handle and now it made
sense.
"Here," she said again, and her nod was insistent, demanding, dogmatic.
"You
can have an African violet. All it needs is light and water, and maybe a
little
fertilizer."
But he was not listening. "No!" he cried. "You keep it! I can't!"
He pushed the mug full of greenery toward the old woman, but she seized
his
wrists and with surprising strength turned him toward the center of the
tunnel.
"No," she said. "I really can't, you know. They're evicting me. But I can't
keep
my flowers. And they're so pretty, aren't they? You take good care of it
now."
"But-- !"
"Go on. I have lots more to give away." There was a push at his back. He
staggered a step, and the flow of traffic swept him up and on.
Fortunately the shirt he wore did not have time-consuming buttons, snaps,
zips, or strips. It wrapped diagonally across his chest, and he thought he
got
the flower out of sight before anyone could recognize it for what it was. An
African violet, she had called it. A plant, of all things.
At least she had sense enough to stay away from the more brightly lit
portions of the tunnel.
Plants were most definitely not approved personal possessions. They were
acceptable only in agricultural domes and tunnels. House plants were prima
facie
evidence of Orbital/Gypsy sympathies at best, of disloyalty and treason at
worst.
If Security spotted the African violet, it would not matter a bit that
his
father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather had all been Security
agents.
An uncle had even been chief of Security on the Munin habitat until a blowout
caught him without a suit.