"Hamilton, Peter F - Greg Mandel 01 - Mindstar Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

'You live here?' Eleanor asked, in a very neutral tone.
'Yes,' he agreed cautiously. The chalets had been built by an ambitious time-share company in conjunction with a golf course running along the back of the spinney, and a grandiose clubhouse/hotel perched between the two. But the whole enterprise was suddenly bumped out of business thanks to the PSP's one-home law. The chalets were commandeered, the golf course returned to arable land, and the hotel transformed into thirty accommodation modules.
Greg always thought the country had been bloody lucky the PSP never got round to a one-room law. The situation had become pretty drastic as the oceans started to rise. The polar melt plateaued eventually, but not before it displaced two million people in England alone.
'I never asked,' she said. 'What is it you do?'
He chuckled. 'Greg Mandel's Investigative Services, at your service.'
'Investigative services? You mean, like a private detective? Angus told me you had a gland.'
'That's right. Of course it was nothing formal in the PSP decade. I didn't go legit until after the Second Restoration.'
'Why not?'
'Public ordinance number five seven five nine, oblique stroke nine two. By order of the President: no person implanted with a psi-enhancement gland may utilize their psi ability for financial gain. Not that many people could afford a private eye anyway. Not with Leopold Armstrong's nineteenth..century ideology screwing up the economy. Bastard. I was also disbarred from working in any State enterprise, and Social security was a joke, the PSP apparatchiks had taken it over, head ~ toc, by the time I was demobbed. Tell you, they didn't like servicemen, and Mindstar veterans were an absolute flo-go zone. The Party was running scared of us. As well they might.'
'How did you manage?'
PITХR F. HAMILTON
12
'I had my Army pension for a couple of years after deniob.' He shrugged. 'The PSP cancelled that soon enough. Fifth Austerity Act, if I recall rightly. I got by. Rutland's always had an agriculture-based economy. There's plenty of casual work to pick up on the farms, and the citrus groves were a boon; that and a few cash-only cases each year, it was enough.'
Her face was solemn. 'I never even saw any money until I was thirteen.'
He put his arm round her shoulder, giving a little reassuring shake. 'All over now.'
She smiled with haunted eyes, wanting to believe. His arm remained.
'Here we are,' he said, 'number six,' and blipped the lock.
The chalet's design paid fleeting homage to the ideal of some ancient Alpine hunting lodge, an overhanging roof all along the front creating a tiny veranda-cum-porch. But its structure lacked genuine Alpine ruggedness: prefab sections which looked like stout red-bark logs from the outside were now rotting badly, the windows had warped under the relentless assault of the new climate's heat and humidity, there was no air-conditioning, and the slates moulted at an alarming rate in high winds. The sole source of electricity was a solar-cell strip which Greg had pasted to the roof. However, the main frame was sound; four by four hardwood timber, properly seasoned. He could never understand why that should be, perhaps the building inspectors had chosen that day to put in an appearance.
The biolum strip came on revealing a lounge area with a sturdy oak-top bar separating it from a minute kitchen alcove at the rear. Its built-in furniture was compact, all light pine. Wearing thin, Greg acknowledged, following Eleanor's questmg gaze. Entropy digging its claws in.
The corners of her lips tugged up. 'Nice. At Egleton, there'd be five of us sharing a room this size. You live here alone?'
'Yeah. The British Legion found it for me. Good people, volunteers. At least they cared, did what they could. And it's all paid for, even if it is falling down around me.'
MINDSTAR RISING
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'They were bad times, weren't they, Greg? I never really saw much of it. But there were the rumours, even in a kibbutz.'
We rode it out, though. This country always does, somehow. That's our strength, in the genes, no matter how far down we fall, we're never out.'
'And you don't mind?'
'Mind what?'
'Me. I was in a kibbutz, that made me a card carrier.'
His arms went round her, hands resting lightly on her buttocks. Faces centimetres apart. Her nose was petite and pointed. 'Only by default. Nobody chooses their parents, and I'd say you un-chose yours pretty convincingly tonight.' His nose touched hers, rubbing gently.
She grinned, shy again. -
The bedroom was on his right, behind a sliding door. A tiny pine-panelled room which was nearly filled by a huge double bed, there was a half-metre gap between the mattress and the walls.
Eleanor flicked him a quick appraising look, and her grin became slyer, lips twitching. Greg leant forward and kissed her.
He cheated with her, just as he'd done with all the others. His espersense was alert for exactly the right moment. It came a minute into the kiss; his hands found the hem of her T-shirt and he was pulling it off over her head, muffling her giggles. The long skirt and silky panties followed quickly.
~Her figure was just as spectacular as his imagination had painted it for him. Eleanor's years at the kibbutz had toughened her, more so than most of the girls he had. He found that erotic; her flat, slightly muscular belly, wide hips, broad, powerful shoulders, all loaded with athletic promise.
Greg's own clothes came off in a fast heated tussle, and they moved on to the bed.
It lasted for an age, building slow. With his eyes he watched the blue and black shadows flow across her smooth damp skin as she stretched and twisted below his hands. With his mind he sensed cold shooting stars igniting along the glistening trail left by the tip of his tongue, then fire along her nerves into
14 PETIR F. HAMILTON


her brain, adding to the glow of arousal. He saw what her, the words she wanted to hear; then exploited the
ies, whispering secret fantasies into her ear, guiding he:
the permutations she'd never dared ask from a parmer b~ After the initial astonishment of making love to
who not only shared her desires but actually relished them, Eleanor shook loose any lingering restraint. Greg laughed in delight as she let her enthusiasm run riot, and told her how she could repay him.
When he asked, she rose up in the way he loved, poisea above him, light from the slumbering bonfire licking at her flesh, deepening her mystique. His hands finally found her breasts. She grinned, seeing his weakness, and played on it, drawing out the poignancy before she twined her legs around him, and pulled herself down. Her mind became almost dazthngly bright as she used him to bring herself to orgasm, all coherency overwhelmed by animal instinct.
Greg let go of Edwards and duty and guilt, and concentrated ;olely on inflaming Eleanor still further.
J
ulia Evans sat at the dresser in her bedroom while the maid brushed daytime knots out of her long chestnut hair. It had to be done every night; she hadn't allowed her hair to be cut for years, and now it hung almost down to her waist. Her best feature, everyone said, striking.
She studied her face in the mirror, plump cheeked and bland, wearing a slightly sorrowful expression. It wasn't an ugly face, by any means. But at seventeen some allure really ought to be evolving.
Access Vanity#Twelve, she told her bioware processor implant silently. At least she had had a sense of humour when she began this memory sequence.
A mirage of her own face, six months younger, unfurled behind her eyes. She compared it to the one in the mirror. There was some change. A burning-off of puppy fat, her cheeks were rounder then. Fractionally.