"Nancy Kress - Crossfire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

Arthur.
I would also like to thank my editor, Jim Minz, for his many valuable suggestions for revision.

In wartime, the truth is so precious that it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies.
тАФWinston Churchill

They change their clime, but not their minds ... who rush across the sea.
тАФHorace CROSSFIRE


PROLOGUE

My God, thought Jake Holman, I did it. He looked up at the faces watching him from the natural
amphitheater of the California hillside. Six thousand faces, white and black and brown and golden,



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large and small, bare and garishly painted, plain and ugly and genemod beautiful, rapt and wary,
with and without headgear. Six thousand people ready to go to the stars. And every single one of
them crazy.
"No one thought we could possibly do this," Jake said into the microphone. "No one believed that a
small, privately held corporation could actually mount this expedition to Greentrees. No one
believed we could raise the money, could build the ship, could equip and staff her. No one
believed any of it would happen."
Because no one believed rich people would leave Earth forever to go God-knows-where. The enormous
fare, the critics said, was the stumbler. Historically new worlds were explored and claimed by
governments and then colonized by the poor and wretched of society: starving Irish potato farmers,
persecuted Puritans and Jews, deported convicts. People with nothing to lose. Of course, half of
those historical emigrants died aboard ship, and half of the survivors died in the first year from
disease and hostile natives. Greentrees was already ahead of the curveтАФthe ship was safe and
Greentrees had no sentients, hostile or otherwise. Still, the unknown was always dangerous. So
why, asked the critics, would anyone with enough money to buy passage on a starship use the money
to leave Earth in favor of a nonexistent colony on an unclaimed, unexplored planet sixty-nine
light-years away?
It had turned out that there were as many reasons for the rich to emigrate from Earth as there
were emigrants. The critics had meant logical reasons; the colonists had reasons of the heart.
"We are a diverse and miraculous group," Jake continued, and from her seat in the front row his
business partner frowned. Not too flowery, Gail mouthed at him. Jake ignored her. "And we have
chosen this path for diverse and miraculous reasons."
Now some of the New Quakers were frowning at him as well. Quakers, Jake had learned, didn't
believe in miracles. Well, too bad for them. This was the last Jake would see of any of them,
except William Shipley, for over six years. Only the Governing Board would be awake for the
journey out, and only as many of them for as long as they could stand it.
"But all of us will have one thing in common: our new home. Greentrees. Mira Corporation salutes
your choice of that home and wishes you joy of it. To the ship that carries us there: Godspeed."
Jake strode away from the microphone. Applause started, tentative at first, then stronger as the
translators put his little speech into Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish. Gail smiled, no doubt