"Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Sime Gen 13 - Operation High Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lichtenberg Jacqueline)

going to do it. My last crusade, my last project."
I leaned back with an explosive sigh. Now to business.
While I spent the next ten days in Noadron, relaxing, quietlymotionless for hours at a time, Grandpa
Digen made plans and contactedpeople. Each evening we'd sit and watch the sunset and he'd tellme how
it was going.
The first night he reported that he had spoken to several Simemanufacturing firms and a patent attorney.
My inventions wouldbe on the market in all Sime territories within the month.
A few days later, he had arranged for a publisher to put out abook about transfer mechanics and
field-gradient sensing writtenin an easy, popular style. Also, he had someone working to changethe image
of the Sime in Gen fiction from the aloofly non-participant-- which was the least explosive he'd been able
to manage whenhe was running his integration crusade -- to sensitive, long-suffering,understanding,
human type people. In a few weeks we'd start pushingstories about retainer incidents.
He organized the whole thing so well that I began to feel it wasn'tmy project. But on the tenth day, we
were sitting on the porchagain, after dinner.
"Well, son, have you had enough Noadron to last you a while?"
"Yes, quite enough."
"That's good. Feel up to a little trip to Washington?"
"Washington? The Gen capitol?"
"Hmmm." He nodded affirmatively.
"I suppose so. Why?"
"Operation High Time is your baby. It's time you took over. I'm too old to travel and too weak to
buttonhole, browbeat, cajole,argue and plead. That's your job and you're scheduled to startwith some
lobbying in Washington."

II
The next morning I was still saying to myself, over and over,"Me? Lobby? In Washington?" I felt unsure
as I boardedthe special helicopter Grandpa had arranged for me.
It just didn't fit my self-image. What does a young doctor whoshould be interning in something-or-other
Memorial Hospital knowabout politics? Still, I'd asked for it when I started this wholething.
As I climbed into the chopper -- life-powered, not petrochemical--thepilot, a Q-class Sime, began to
modulate the three dynopter fieldsthat twirled our blades, and we were off.
Cross country from the Pacific Ocean to Washington-on-Potomacin a two-seat whirly would be
impossible if we couldn't hop fromone Sime island territory to the next for re-fueling, that istaking on new
life-packed batteries.
We arrived at the Sime Reserve just south of the Potomac borderof Washington about dark, and I
decided to stay at the HarvingtonWard for the night before plunging into the Gen area. The SimeReserve
is not really a Sime Territory. It's a legal fiction,like a foreign embassy. Its borders are sacrosanct and it's
internallyunder Sime law, but it's only the size of a small city, not theusual few hundred miles across.
From my room in the Ward, I couldsee the Gen capitol afire with colored lights designed to makethe
buildings look impressive, which was unnecessary. They were. What was impressive to me was that of all
that electricity, probablysixty percent was life-powered.
The next morning I claimed the car Grandpa had reserved for meand drove into the Gen Capitol. It was
one of those magnificentlyalive fall days that can follow the misery of a Washington summer.
I had a ten o'clock appointment with Jon Izak whom Grandpa hadonly identified as a professional
lobbyist. Izak's plush suitewas across the street from the Senate offices. His private officecowered behind
three roams full of secretaries and stenographers. In his office, I waited for him while gloomily
contemplatinghow I'd stopped every machine in the place simply by walking inthe door. Evidently, they
weren't expecting a Sime.
"So you're Mairus Farris!"
The voice that came from behind me would have boomed fifty yearsago. Now it croaked huskily. I was