"Tom Kratman - A Desert Called Peace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kratman Tom)

There was a knock on the door. "Come in," Robinson commanded, rising and throwing on a robe,
walking to the main cabin, and ordering the door to his sleeping chamber to close.
"Maintenance crew, Your Excellency," said the Class Three technician. "Got the replacement screen
for your cabin. New stuff, Your Excellency, just brought up from Atlantis Base by shuttle. Be only a few
minutes to install it."
"Be at it, then," Robinson ordered. Then, since the installation was likely to prove noisy and
bothersome, he retired back to his sleeping cabin and the captain. On the way he happened to notice the
box the view screen came packaged in. Kurosawa Vision Solutions, 101 Imperial Way, Kamakura,
Yamato, Terra Nova. Fragile: take special care when moving, the carton said.
Kurosawa always took extra special care of the products it sold to the fleet.
Special care or not, too much of the fleet is operating that way now. Earth sends so little,
and the ships are growing so old.
Indeed, of the twenty-seven ships in geosynchronous orbit around the planet, two of them were little
more than husks with rotating skeleton crews aboard. The meat of the things had been cannibalized to
keep up the rest of the fleet.
And how many more will I have to order cannibalized to keep the fleet going? Robinson
wondered, as he lay back down on his bunk. And how much can we continue to buy from below
without arousing suspicions about our real status? Wouldn't those bastards in the FSC like to
know they could nuke half my fleet now with impunity?
Buying from the Terra Novans had its problems. For one thing, the fleet had little to offer in
exchange. Food was impractical to export over interstellar distances despite the Rift which made
personal travel in cryogenic suspension reasonable. Besides, the Novans who could pay for food didn't
need to. Indeed, the fleet purchased all its food locally along with the petrochemical fuel for the shuttles.
This was explained to the Novans as simple economics; cheaper to buy locally than to import. This
wouldn't have hurt Robinson so deeply if it had been the only reason. The fact was that Earth could not
send food or petrochemicals even if the Consensus wanted to.
There were only four worthwhile and practical things to trade to the Novans to keep the fleet
running. Technology was one, but it was under ban by the Council and had been for centuries. Besides,
what Earth had wasn't all that far ahead of what the Novans were capable of making for themselves now.
Gold? Half the gold of Earth was already on Terra Nova; same for the silver, platinum, palladium and
rhodium. There were plenty of proles to trade as slaves, but the Novans, most of them, had little use for
slaves. And the Moslems, and especially the Salafis, who did have use for slaves, only wanted pretty
young girls and boys. Since there was a strong market for those on Earth as well, saleable slaves were a
tight commodity. Moreover, you never really could tell what the proles knew. If they were questioned,
and the Novans realized what Earth had become, it could be a disaster for the Fleet as well as the Earth.
Art, Robinson sighed. I am reduced to selling Earth's artistic patrimony to keep in being the
fleet that keeps Earth from being overrun in a hundred years or less and looted of, among other
things, its art.
Ah well, I should be grateful I was able to talk the Caliph into turning over to me so much of
the contents of the Vatican's cellars. Fortunate, too, that he valued them so little. Then again,
with even the followers of Islam so few, and most of those barbarians in the reverted areas back
home who could care less about the Caliph, I suppose he needed the credit as well.
Robinson closed his eyes and dozed fitfully. He was awakened, sometime later, by the same
technician who had come to install the new view screen. "We're done, Your Excellency. Also, your aide,
Baron Fiske, said to tell you the shuttle is ready to take you to Atlantis Base whenever you're ready."
***
The shuttle itself was the same silvery color as the Peace Fleet ships. As the shuttle door split, it also
split the blue and white symbol of United Earth. This was a map of the Earth, from the northern
hemisphere with the southern hemisphere distorted out of scale, on which had been superimposed marks
for longitude and latitude, the whole being almost surrounded by a laurel wreath. There was symbolism is