"Dean Ing - Single Combat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ing Dean)

Scanned by Highroller and proofed more or less by Highroller.

PART 1: SEARCH & RESCUE

CHAPTER 1

The reverend Ora McCarty faced the wall in the most sacrosanct office of International Entertainment
and Electronics and watched a holo image of himself sing an old inspirational: 'Rocky Mountain High'. It
had airedтАФor so McCarty believedтАФduring his Sunday morning program. From the corner of his eye
McCarty could see the expression on the face of IEE Chairman Boren Mills. It was, in Ora McCarty's
jargon, nervous-makin'.

The holovised McCarty strummed a last chord on a sequined guitar, held the last note, then winked from
existence as Mills keyed his hand-terminal. "Hey, you cut off my finish," McCarty said affably.

"Call me a music-lover," Boren Mills replied in soft derision. "But don't tell me you didn't know that song
is on the prohibited list."

McCarty turned to face the smaller Mills. "Aw, that's for Mormons! That song don't tempt people to
take drugs, no matter what they think in Salt LakeтАФ"

"Do I have to remind you who subsidizes your gentile services?" Boren Mills snapped, his bright dark
eyes flashing under heavy brows. "If the church is liberal enough to support a mildly heretical preacher,
the least you can do is exercise judgment with your material."

"Censor myself, you mean," McCarty grumbled. "Seems to me, you LDS folksтАФ"

"Correction! I'm a Congregationalist, Ora. Never, ever, link me with the Latter-Day Saints."

"WellтАж" McCarty's half-smile suggested that he was buying a polite fiction, "тАж those LDS folks are
happy with my mission just so long as it's mainly country-western entertainment that don't take issue with
anything they want said."

"Entertainment is my middle name," said Mills with deliberate symbolism. IEE's middle name was
'entertainment', and whatever board members twice his age might prefer, thirtyish Boren Mills was IEE.

"Entertainment's what I gave my holo audience," McCarty nodded.

"Not with 'Rocky Mountain High," Mills rejoined, the receding vee of his widow's peak moving
side-to-side in negation. "Your monitor has his orders. Since my last name is 'Electronics', what your holo
audience got was 'In The Fourth Year of Zion'."

"The hell they did."

"The hell they didn't," Mills replied easily.

"I don't even know that piece," McCarty insisted, then formed a silent 'oh' of sudden enlightenment. Ora
McCarty was still essentially a twentieth-century man in 2002 AD, coping with the technology of
war-ravaged, Streamlined America. At times that coping was slow, and sullen. "You faked me."