"Foster, Alan Dean - Cat-a-lyst" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)
the product of a fully mature Shihar. It clung to the fringes of her consciousness, refusing to go away. She'd been feeling it now for years. Each
Cat - a - Lyst 17
time she had tried to pursue, it had fled, its echoes dissipating untraceably in the pockets of emptiness that occupied the plenum between ordinary mass, mocking her attempts to carry out her monitoring functions. She was persistent and dedicated, but not even the most experienced Monitor could capture a taunt.
Nor could she expend very much energy tracking disquieting phantoms. Too many other tasks made demands on her time and talents. There were the immature Shihar of this world to nurture, and the promising Others to guide and cajole toward civilization. Yet the disturbance never left her entirely, and occasional widely spaced reminders of its presence served to keep her alert for any chance to pounce.
Somewhere an unregistered Shihar was biding its time, planning disruption, intending inimical influence. It was her task to ensure that did not take place while simultaneously preserving her anonymity.
So much work to be done, so many seemingly inconsequential yet vital details to attend to. Endless was the task of Monitor, yet also endlessly rewarding. Not one but two species benefited from her untiring attention: the domestic immature Kind, and the Others. The rewards of monitoring lay in watching her charges progress.
She had no intention of seeing her hard-won accomplishments jeopardized by some unregistered, mischievous Renegade.
Somewhere there must be a god, Jason thought, who looks after fools, idiots, and suicidal film directors. Not only did the cloud cover break and the rain stop falling, so did most of the crap.
After a lengthy conversation with his agent, a gentleman of no taste and impeccable credentials within the field who expounded tersely to his client on the virtues of working in any capacity as opposed to not working at all, Melrose Fleet returned to the set to deliver the remainder of his lines with a subservient aplomb that left even jaded crew members applauding.
Amanda Peters (nee Ethel Berkowitz of Tope, Oklahoma) executed her final scenes with vigor and style, managing to appear at once distraught waif, noble southern belle, and period costume nymphomaniac. The fact that her three erstwhile attackers concluded their parts with their parts more the worse for wear than hers constituted a kind of poetic justice, not to mention license. Once the director had been assured by his sound man that her occasional out-of-character four-letter outbursts could be easily edited out of the live track, he pronounced himself delighted.
As for the lingering clouds, they provided the kind of diffuse dramatic lighting the best matte artists could not have surpassed. Only after the
18 Alan Dean Foster
final covering shots were in the can did the rain return, in the form of a deluge heavy enough to have extinguished the real burning of Atlanta had it fallen a hundred and some years earlier.
Car-ter made his way through the rain toward the wardrobe trailer. Inside, he slipped behind a privacy screen and began removing his cos-
tume. Along with those which had garbed the rest of the cast it would be carefully packed and returned to Los Angeles, preserved and numbered in case reshooting or sequels were required.
After dressing in jeans, sweatshirt, and sneakers, he stepped out and passed the Union uniform one piece at a time to the diminutive woman waiting behind a narrow counter. She chatted as she checked each piece against the readout on her laptop. "Bet y'all are glad this shoot is over." Her consonants twanged against her palate as if someone were using the letters for guitar picks. Texas, Carter thought. He'd never asked her but the accent was pretty easy to slot.
He shrugged. "The usual disagreements over artistic interpretation." She let out a derisive snort. "Artistic copulation, you mean. But you stayed clear of what was flyin', didn't you? That's the best thing you got goin' for you in this business, cuddles. Not your looks, not your voice. You got equilibrium. Always say that no matter what his profession, a
body's got to maintain its equilibrium." She tucked his officer's hat into a
plastic bag that had his name scrawled on it. "Gonna keep everybody around for another week, I hear. Try and get some close-ups and two-shots with backgrounds, make the editors happy. Then we're outta here." She smiled up at him. She was in her fifties, he suspected. Country-pretty, not Hollywood. Marjorie Ashwood was part flirt, part grandma, all professional. She could whip up a new costume on the computer laser cutter in the back of the trailer faster than most seamstresses could alter a hem.
His reciprocal smile turned to a wince when she added, "Goin' to do a pic in South America, I hear." "Possibly," he mumbled. "Some kind of river epic?" "I'd rather not discuss it. It's still in the talking stage." "You don't have to explain." She was buttoning the officer's jacket she'd hung on a plastic hanger. "This is ol' Mad you're talking to, re-
member?" When the jacket was ready she pushed a button that revolved the wardrobe rack, hung the jacket alongside its identical twins. The rack was crammed full. Period pictures demanded extensive wardrobes and experienced wardrobe masters to look after them.
Cat - a - Lyst 19
As she clipped the pants to a second hanger something slipped from a front pocket. Catching it before it hit the floor, she held it up to the light. "What's this?" "Oh, I forgot about that." He pulled his rain poncho from his carry pack. "Found it in the grass today. Asked around but nobody claimed it." He looked thoughtful. "There were a bunch of gawkers around ear-
lier. Some studio flunky was escorting them. Maybe one of them lost it. There's no label." "I can see that." Light refracted from the argent slice as she turned it over in her fingers. "This size, it's probably a storage disc. Funny there's no label. Maybe it peeled off." Her eyebrows lifted. "Want to see what's on it?"
The laptop whined as she powered it up and slid the disc into the twoinch slot. A couple of keys got her out of her cadcam costume program and into a search utility. Carter waited patiently. "That oriental gal was in earlier looking for you." Ashwood spoke as
she teased keys. "The reporter?" "Trang Ho. The term 'reporter' doesn't apply to her. She's a professional snoop." "That a fact? I'd almost think she had a thing for you." "She's like that with everybody. Not that she wouldn't sleep with me, but it'd be to get a story, not sex." "I know the type. She gets her orgasms from gossip." The comment did not surprise Carter. Despite her grandmotherly attributes, Ashwood had an earthy sense of humor. And she'd worked in film for thirty years. "She tried pumping me a few times, too." "You didn't give her any material?" "Me?" Ashwood glanced up at him. "I got a pension comin' someday soon, good-lookin'. I'm not about to jeopardize that by whisperin' ru-
mors somebody might trace back to me." She leaned toward the screen, squinting over her half-bifocals. "This is interestin'." "What?" He tried to see around her. "Come look for yourself."
20 Alan Dean Foster
He raised the divider and peered over her shoulder, frowning. "You know I don't know anything about computers, Marjorie. I'm not one of these actors who want to direct, produce, light the set, and run the camera. I'm about as technically oriented as a geranium. I don't see anything." "That's because there's nothin' to see. The contents of this disc are protected. System's too elaborate for this to be a cheap bootleg copy of a concert. What we got here is some serious information storage." She fiddled with the keys. Words and images flashed across the screen. "What are you doing?" "Just hackin' around. Ah, here we go. The codes ain't real complicated. Just enough to discourage the casual prober. I never was the casual type.11 "Isn't this invasion of privacy or something?" Carter was uneasy. "Naw. If this was major stuff, government or internat, I wouldn't have been able to get in so easy. Not with a commercial search program. See?" She pointed triumphantly. "Owner's name and address. We done a good thing, good-lookin'. Says there's a reward for safe return, too." Her fingers hovered above the keyboard. "Now let's see what he's so anxious to have back."
Carter put a hand on her shoulder. "We don't have to do that, Marjorie. It might be personal. Family records, tax information . . . We don't know." "Aren't you even a little curious?" "Not really." "Reward's a thousand bucks." She tapped the screen. "It's a Georgia address. Can't be that far. I don't know where Brunswick is but we can find it on a map. Why don't you come with me? I'll split the reward with you.1t "I don't need the money, Marjorie." He smiled down at her. The offer to share indicated just how unaffected by Hollywood Marjorie Ashwood was.
"I won't force it on you, but I'd enjoy your company. We can split the driving, if not the reward. C'mon, cuddles. I can hang out the window and pretend you're my gigolo. You can spare an old gal some time. Tomorrow's Saturday. No work 'til Monday no matter what our phayroh decides." "Nahfoud said something about looking at rushes," Carter replied lamely.
Ashwood made a rude noise. "Uh-huh. And the first thing he's gonna do is ask the actors for their opinions. Get real, good-lookin'."
Car-ter considered. His instinctive first thought was that despite the
Cat - a - Lyst 21
difference in their ages she might be looking for an opportunity to put the make on him now that their professional relationship was about to end. He decided that wasn't the case. If that was what Ma@orie Ashwood wanted, she would've put the question to him directly, and before now.
"Let's find out where this place is first," he said. "You got it, gorgeous."
She returned the laptop to the main menu, withdrew the disc, and pulled up a resident atlas. By zip code, it placed the address on the disc on the south Georgia coast. "Pretty good drive," he commented. "Any farther south and you'd be in Florida." "Okay by me. I've always wanted to see more of the South. Never worked this part of the country before." She favored him with another of her maternal, impish grins. "I'm not as widely traveled as some folks." :,Very funny. I don't pick the locations of the pictures I make." 'Then you'll come along? We will make an interestin' couple. Unsettle the natives."
It would be nice to get away from the intense atmosphere that sur-
rounded the production, he thought. See some new country, meet some new people. The Teamsters he usually hung out with probably had plans of their own for the weekend. And he'd heard that the Georgia coast was
real pretty. , :,Why not?" He buttoned up his poncho. "I'll rent a car." 'I'll let you," she said agreeably.
III
THEY clung to 95 all the way to the coast, picking up Interstate 16 just north of Savannah. From there it was a straight shot southward.
Much of the town of Brunswick was obscured by dense forest which
was a never-ending source of wonder to a visitor from Southern California. Piney woods dominated the terrain in every direction except east, where tidal flats and rush-choked waterways separated the coast from a
verdant necklace of barrier islands.
The address led them to a cluster of private postal boxes. Only Ashwood's insistence and Carter's wheedling succeeded in prying the location of the owner's actual residence from the reluctant but slightly awed franchise operator. "Can't get a reward from a post office box," Ashwood pointed out.
The disc's owner lived not on the mainland but on nearby Sea Island, which was itself a suburb of Saint Simon Island. Directions sent them
across a busy causeway, through housing developments and compact shopping centers, across a second much smaller causeway, until they eventually found themselves driving down an unexpectedly beautiful ave-
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