"Frankowski, Leo - Stargard 3 - The Radiant Warrior" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

The Radiant Warrior
Book 3 of the Adventures of Conrad Starguard

By Leo Frankowski

ISBN: 0-345-32764-0






Prologue


She unloaded the temporal canister, glanced quickly at her new subordinate, loaded it with her last superior, and sent it two and a half million years uptime. One contact every fifty years and that for only a few seconds. Life this far back was a bitch.

The new arrival was biosculpted into a male version of herself, a type twenty-seven protohuman. He was barely four feet tall, skinny and with dark brown skin. He was also naked, since clothing wouldnТt be invented for millions of years.

She switched off his stasis field.

He looked up at the stalactites hanging above him from the cave roof. Confused, he looked over at her.

УSurprise! You son of a bitch!Ф she shouted. УWelcome to two and a half million B.C.! Welcome to a hundred years of dodging leopards and eating grubs and shivering up in a tree all night, you bastard, because itТs all your fault!Ф

УWhat? Where am I?Ф

УThe where is eastern Africa, you lucky boy, but the fun part is the when! YouТre in the Anthropological Corps now and you get to do the exciting work of tracking protohuman migration patterns!Ф

УThis must be some sort of a joke! And you are the rudest and the ugliest woman IТve ever seen!Ф

УWatch your language, buster! IТm your boss and will be for the next fifty years. And if you think I'm ugly, just wait until you see yourself in a mirror, not that we have one.Ф

УWhat is going on here? None of this makes sense! I was in twentieth-century Poland, doing my paperwork, when the monitors came in and I woke up here. And I look like you?Ф

УYeah, minus the floppy tits, ugly.Ф

УButЕ why?Ф

УYour file says itТs a punishment detail for gross incompetence. You completely failed to brief a new subordinate on security procedures! She left the wrong door open. And the Owner's own cousin, who had never heard of time travel, got transported back to Poland's thirteenth century, ten years before the Mongol invasions. Then the Owner himself found his cousin in the battle lines during the invasion. The man had been there for ten years before he was discovered! There was nothing they could do about it without violating causality. When you screw up, you don't fart around!Ф

УButЕ without notification, without trial?Ф

УYou mess with the OwnerТs family, you're in deep shit, boy!Ф

УWellЕ what are you doing here, then?Ф

УYou donТt recognize me? I suppose I should be crushed, you bastard, but I'm not. I'm the woman that you failed to brief, you shithead! I've been in this lousy pest hole for fifty years because of you, and now I've got fifty more to get you back for it!Ф