"Julian May - Rampart Worlds 3 - Sagittarius Whorl" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

Outside the glass was an immense city, viewed from a height. It was night. Soaring
towers rose on either hand as far as I could see, their shining colored forms enmeshed in
webs of skyways and high roads with streams of cars zipping along them. Aircraft moved
in traffic-controlled pathways like regimented fireflies through a sky tinted bright gold. It
had to be snowing hard outside the force-field umbrella.
That wasn't Artiuk out there, or any other Haluk colony. It was Earth. And the city
was one I knew intimately: Toronto, capital of the Commonwealth of Human Worlds.
Still holding the blood-soaked towel to my neck, I began to laugh like a maniac. I only
stopped when the outer door of the room crashed open and the two medical technicians
rushed inside, followed by a pair of uniformed Haluk guards armed with Ivanov stun-
pistols.
 Chapter 2
Last April, when I still wore the outward appearance of a human being, I said goodbye
to my legal staffers and got the hell out of town. While the judges considered their
verdict, I intended to rest up at my family's Sky Ranch in Arizona and consider my
futureтАФespecially in regards to the Barky Hunt.
For the first couple of days I did nothing but sleep. Then I worked out in the ranch's
well-equipped gym, swam laps in the indoor poolтАФit still being a trifle brisk outdoors in
the high countryтАФread some vintage Louis L'Amour and John D. MacDonald, and
finished off each evening riding out to watch the sun go down in a different part of the
sprawling Frost family spread.
My favorite mount was a horse named Billy, a huge sweet-natured gelding of the type
southwesterners call a flea-bitten gray. That's not to mean he's infested or broken down;
the odd term describes a variety of pale horse speckled all over with tiny spots of blue
and red hair. Billy was strong and smart, he obeyed orders, and he didn't spook when an
unexpected quail or jackrabbit exploded out of the chaparral right under his nose. In
Arizona you can't hardly ask more of a horse than that.
On the tenth day of my holiday, Billy and I plodded easily uphill in the lengthening
shadows while thin clouds turned from white to pink beyond the Tonto Basin. Spring in
the Sierra Ancha is unobtrusively lovely. Golden yuccas, buckbrush, and manzanitas
were blooming, tiny little hummingbirds with amethyst throats poked busily around the
flowers for a final snack before nightfall, and the ethereal song of the hermit thrush
echoed among the mesas and canyons.
It was a great place for unwinding, as different from the capital of the Commonwealth
of Human Worlds as it could possibly be.
I'd left Toronto in a seriously fatigued state. Only my close-mouthed executive
assistant, Jane Nelligan, knew where I was going, and she was under orders to reveal my
whereabouts to no one. I told the ranch staff to ignore my presence, and they didтАФexcept
for the horse wrangler who cared for Billy, and Rosalia the cook, who supplied me with
three gourmet squares a day and kept the chitchat to a minimum.
I'd earned some incommunicado time. After more than two years of cosmic-class
courtroom warfare, Rampart Concern's civil suit against Galapharma was finally ready
for adjudication. Now it was up to three justices of the Commonwealth Tribunal to
produce a verdict in what the media had deemed the corporate trial of the century, David
vs. Goliath.
Little Rampart, youngest and smallest of the Hundred Concerns, was suing the pants
off Galapharma, one of the oldest and largest. We alleged conspiracy to devalue for the
purpose of hostile acquisition, sabotage, industrial espionage, theft and subsequent
malicious use of data, subornation of Rampart employees, and a lengthy laundry list of
other major torts. Pursuant to Statute 129 of the Interstellar Commerce Code, Rampart