"Thomas Easton - Organic Future 04 - Seeds of Destiny" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

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.
He tried to look innocent.
He tried not to stare at his fellow pedestrians. That just wasn't done. Only the very young and the
guilty failed to pretend they were alone in the tunnels, on the way to work or home or running errands.
He tried not to search the tunnel walls and ceiling for Security cameras. But if he couldn't look at the
African violet and he couldn't look at people, there was nothing else at which to aim his eyes.
At least he could refrain from scanning, couldn't he? Then he wouldn't look like he was searching for
cameras. He wouldn't look guilty.
Unless they watched for people who were obviously trying not to be noticed.
In which case he had better not keep looking away from shopping carts. It was quite natural to peek,
to see what people had found in their shopping, to learn what foods had come from the farms. Like that
purple globe of eggplant, red-skinned onions, blue-green potsters, green broccoli, pale white fish.
He forgot the fish as his eyes jerked back to the green and away.
He wished he had a reader with him.
There! Watch those! Illuminated signs that advertised beer and pizza and minerals formed when Mars
had water a billion years ago. Crystals, the shop bragged. Mudstone marked with ripples. Wormtracks.
Shells.
There was a diskshop stocked with newsdisks, novels, textbooks, games, and more. Its entrance was
never clear, for people moved steadily in and out.
A tour shop, its entrance flanked by glass-cased, bright-lit posters showing the vast rise of Olympus
Mons, the gorge of Marineris just as vast, Io spuming yellow, red, and black, the desolation of the lunar
highlands, coral reefs on Earth, fishless and stark, Earth itself viewed from orbit. Next door a clothing
store, its display assuring everyone it sold everything from the flimsiest of nightwear to Martian hardsuits.
Marcus Aurelius Hrecker let his attention settle on a tiny robot, legs flickering as it scurried along the
floor, dodged feet, and raced up a ramp attached to the tunnel wall. There was another robot on the shelf
that ran just above all the doorways and display cases and neon signs and usually kept the machines off
the floor and out from underfoot. The first ignored the pull-outs, the ramps up and down, and the access
holes that led inside the walls. It met a third, and there was room to pass. It stopped. Its head rose,
antennae wiggled as it optimized the signal it was receiving, and it began to move again, faster, running
now, practically flying, taking the ramp that led to the next cross-path, arched riblike beneath the tunnel's
roof.
The little robots removed dust and litter and debris, searched for defects in tunnels and ducts, repaired
what they could, and signalled for human assistance when a problem was beyond their abilities. Marcus
Aurelius Hrecker shared his people's pride in the versatile machines even though he understood their
major shortcoming. They were a triumph of mechanical and electronic technology, but they were no
nearer the ultimate goal than they had been a century before. Only the sort of information storage one