"May, Julian - Galactic Milieu 3 - Magnificat" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

"I wonder if they'd really be able to do that?" the Dirigent said softly, turning away from him to look down at the crowded plaza below the Space Needle. "Even if they took away our starships and other high technology, we'd still have our brains. We could build it all again. They'd never slaughter us outright--it's contrary to their damned Unity ethic. Whatever means of mental or physical interdiction they used, we could eventually overcome."
"Perhaps," the Fleet Commander admitted. "But it might take generations."
"We can't compromise on the Unity question," she said urgently. "We can't let the exotics force us into this--this pacifistic mental intercourse of theirs. We have a right to evolve in our own way, flaws and all."
"I agree. But they've said they won't coerce us into Unity..."
"No. They're more insidious than that, with their talk of mutual love and perfect civilization! They're setting a trap, reminding us how morally deficient we still are, promising cosmic harmony, an end to aggression, paradise in the here and now." She turned back to him, her expression stony. "But the exotics are deceivers, Owen. They'd make us docile slaves of the Milieu, destroy human individuality, and subordinate our superior minds to their own stunted view of reality."
The Fleet Commander pretended to wince. "I hope you won't make the point too emphatically with Director Anne Remillard and her people when they haul me on the carpet for neglecting to suppress disloyalty."
The Dirigent of Okanagon smiled contritely. "Well, maybe not this time around. I came here today hoping to make things easier for you and the Fleet in Remillard's inquiry, not to stir up a fresh hornet's nest. I promise to be ever so mealymouthed and smarmy."
"That'll be the day." Owen consulted his wrist chronograph. The Directorate courier ship is due to break through the superficies into c-space just about now. It'll do a VIP docking right here at the Space Needle in less than five minutes. I really would appreciate your support, Pat. But remember: De la diplomatie, et encore la diplomatie, et toujours la diplomatie!"
She embraced him lightly and kissed his cheek. "You betcha, mon cher commandant. Together we'll bedazzle the inquisitors with our arsenal of good and worthy shit. We'll prove that Rebellion equates with virtue--and that we don't really mean it when we skulk and plot and mutter about seceding from the Galactic Milieu."
Owen threw back his head and roared with laughter.
"Seriously," Patricia said, "my image is just as smutchy as yours in the eyes of the Concilium. I welcome this chance to defend Okanagon against critics who view us as a cesspool of sedition."
"I doubt that this inquiry will be that stringent. I have a feeling we're all going to be terribly decorous and nice. The Unity Directorate has no official mandate to purge Rebel elements of the Fleet. At worst, they can require that the operant officers submit to attitude readjustment courses."
Patricia rolled her eyes and began to chant in a mocking falsetto. "Thou shalt not mistrust nor despise thy inhuman neighbor! Thou shalt not impute that Teilhardian Unanimization is a crock of shit. Thou shalt not worry thy silly little head about getting into a permanent mind-meld with exotics when sweet Unity eventually prevails ... And thou especially shalt not contemplate the inconvenient fact that humanity has greater mental potential than the coadunate races, and would be better off outside their damned confederation."
"Time is on our side, Pat. The Concilium backed off on outlawing us Rebels for a very good reason: The action would have alienated most of nonoperant humanity and a fairish proportion of the metas. But the day will come when we can compel the Milieu to let us go our own way."
"Maybe. But you'd still better pray that we manage to get the CE hats built without getting caught." She turned away from him, look out a small compact, and touched up her lip gloss. "Well, I'm as lovely as I'll ever be. Bring on the Inspector General, and we'll--"
The external annunciator said: "Vessel emergency. Vessel emergency. Space Needle personnel prepare for sigma cover."
"Oh, shit," Owen muttered. His mind farspoke Ground Navigation Control: ThisisCommanderwhatemergency?
A laconic telepathic reply came from the chief controller: Incoming courier HU 0-652 ex NAVCON in uncontrolled full-power inertialess descent severe atmospheric ablation precludes RF com or mental hail NAVCON unable trigger emergency upsilon translation and tractor-beam retrieval of impacting craft unfeasible deploying ground-defense sigma.
Frozen with horror, Patricia asked Owen: Isit AnneRemillardship?
Yes.
Abruptly, the sky above the headquarters stratotower darkened to ultramarine blue and the structures and landing pads surrounding it faded into ghostly insubstantiality. The Space Needle and everything within a radius of three kilometers of it had been enclosed within the protective hemisphere of an enormous sigma-field. A moment later smaller sigmas, dimly visible to Owen and Patricia as mirrored half-bubbles, shielded every building and parked spacecraft within the estimated impact area.
"Can you farsee the ship, Pat? I'm damned if I can make it out through the sigma."
She nodded grimly, her face tilted toward the sky. "It's vectoring in vertically. A flaming broad arrow."
"No tumbling?"
"Straight down, like it's on rails."
"Then the situation must involve more than rho-field generator malfunction. It could be that the pilot is deliberately augering in, overriding the approach control backups. Come on!"
He seized her hand and pulled her into the observation platform's lift. As they whisked down to ground level the car vibrated to a faint ground tremor.
"That's it," Patricia murmured. Her eyes were unfocused, her ultrasenses concentrated on the accident site. "Ground Control has cut the big sigma ... The debris is right at the bubble tangent, almost due east. There's no crater. The ship hit the shield and slid on down."
The elevator door opened and the two of them ran across the broad main lobby. Appalled humans and exotics, most of them in uniform, had gathered into small groups, listening to audible and telepathic announcements of the disaster.
The Reel Commander and the Dirigent dashed outside. Sirens of emergency ground vehicles wailed in the distance. Because of the danger of residual ionization or anomalous dy-fields shorting out their generators, rhocraft were prohibited from approaching the scene of a superluminal carrier crash until their safety could be assured.
At the edge of the Needle's east plaza was a rank of staff eggs. Their drivers stood together gaping at the thin column of smoke in the distance. Owen's coercion scattered the bystanders and he hauled open the door to one of the rhocraft. "Breaking regulations," he said. "But to hell with it. The courier's burnt and blasted to bits. There's no danger of field-suppression or explosion."
Moments later he and Patricia were in the air, hovering over the scene of the crash. They were the first ones to arrive.
"My sweet Lord," the Dirigent whispered. "Is that a body?" Then she cried, "There! Do you see it?"
Cursing, Owen Blanchard maneuvered the egg to set down as close as possible to the thing Patricia's farsight had indicated. They climbed out and stumbled through smoldering grass littered with shattered cerametal and half-melted fragments of nameless detritus. The courier wreckage had fallen into a landscaped area near the edge of a pad. Some of the ornamental trees were still on fire. Others were blackened skeletons.
What they found was incredible.
The body of a woman, mutilated and frightfully burned, with lidless eyes wide open. The eyes moved. She was alive.
Awestruck, Owen knelt beside her. "Unbelievable! Somehow she must have managed to generate a partial protective envelope."
"It's the Director," said Patricia. "I recognize her mental signature." Ground vehicles were approaching and sirens blared. "The paramedics are almost here."
"Anne!" Owen called. He dared not touch the woman's ruined corporeal shell, but his mind reached out to hers with coercive strength. "Can you tell us what happened?"
Anne Remillard's last vestige of metacreative screening winked out. Suddenly a rush of pain hit Owen and Patricia with a force that was almost physical. The victim's thoughts were broken, indecipherable. She seemed to be on the brink of death. Hastily, the Dirigent added her own quotient of grandmasterly redaction to Owen's powerful coercivity. Mentally conjoined in a rough metaconcert, they sustained the injured Director's flickering lifeforce until the medical crew arrived and swiftly connected her to their sophisticated machines.
Exerting all her willpower, Anne spoke telepathically: Dying?
"It's all right," the chief medic reassured her. "You're going to live. The regen-tank will take care of everything."
Anne's mind said: Good. I'm going down now...
"That's right," another technician said. "Let go. No more farspeech. No more thinking."
But in the last minute before she lost consciousness, Anne Remillard transmitted a single thought to her rescuers:
Hydra.
"Hydra?" The paramedic was mystified. "What the hell does that mean?"
Owen Blanchard and Patricia Castellane exchanged glances.
"It means trouble," the Fleet Commander said quietly. He turned away and began to walk back to his own rhocraft. "Come along, Pat. We'll have to notify the Galactic Magistratum... and the First Magnate of the Human Polity."