"Keith Laumer - Bolos 8 - Bolo Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

left, stripped bare by the Invaders and open to the elements, still provided some shelter from
weather and mud, at least for some of the survivors. The building wasn't big enough for all, and
makeshift tents and shanties made of sheet metal, canvas, and even cardboard surrounded the old
manufactory complex inside the encircling, invisible walls of the power fence. Here, the several
thousand slaves surviving in and near Celeste had been gathered to serve the Masters' glory; here
was where they lived when they weren't in the city, toiling on their hands and knees.

Groaning their exhaustion, the men and women of the incoming shift staggered to their allotted
places and collapsed in muddy neaps. The workday was long, eleven or twelve hours, and was
followed by about eight hours of downtime before the next stint in the pits. No one was sure of
the exact times, of course, since none of the slaves had been allowed to retain fmgerwatches or
personal comps, and the only means of telling time was by estimations drawn from the movements of
suns and stars through the course of Cloud's long, long thirty-five-hour day. Tamas Reuter, who'd
been an astronomer before The Killing, had tried building a water clock for the small community
once, calibrating it by the movements of the suns. The trusties had destroyed it before it had
been completed, though, with dire warnings about what would happen if the Masters found out... as
if the Masters didn't already know everything that the trusties did. Dieter HolUnsworth, once a
high-energy physicist at New Aberdeen University, had rigged a sundial on the old factory roof,
disguising it as stray bits of wood and stone, but that only worked when the suns were up, when it
wasn't cloudy, and when someone could actually get up there to look at the thing.

Jaime's assigned place was on the west side of the building, Block Seven. For a long time, he lay
on his spot on the floor, trying to marshal his strength and wondering if the effort was even
worthwhile. A lonely gong sounded in the darkness, and the men and women crowded into the damp
shadows around him began rising to their feet and trudging toward the open end of the factory.
Many were naked, save for the accumulated layers of caked-on mud and

19 grime or perhaps a breechclout of dirty rags. Any nudity taboo had long ago vanished; they
moved like silent, emaciated, muddy ghosts, each clutching his or her sole possession, a bowl or
plate or other container scavenged from the surrounding ruins.

Chowtime.

"C'mon, Jaime," Wal told him, giving him a nudge in the ribs with a bare foot. "Gotta keep your
strength up, right?"

Jaime considered the alternative. Lots of slaves had starved to death in the past year;
malnutrition was probably the greatest killer there was in the camp, after pneumonia and random
harvestings by the Masters. The trouble was, it took so damned long to die that way, and if you
became so weak that you couldn't get up and work, then you were harvested, and that was tie one
form of death here that no one welcomed.

"Come on, Major," another voice, a woman's voice, told him in the darkness. "There wasn't anything
you could have done for Rahni."



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