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

There was a more chilling possibility--one that the lofty-minded, altruistic exotic races of the Milieu had scarcely yet begun to address. What if the illicit cerebroenergetic equipment wasn't intended for criminals at all? What if the faction of anti-Unity humans, the so-called Rebels, were arming themselves in order to secede from the galactic confederation by force?
It was a far-fetched idea that had come into her mind out of nowhere--perhaps because of the upcoming lunch with her father, about which she was feeling qualmish--and she gave it small credence. Callie wasn't yet a hotbed of anti-Milieu sentiment as cosmop Okanagon and some of the "planets of color" were; but its Celtic-heritage denizens were prickly and antiestablishment by nature, and hardship caused by the diatreme eruption had exacerbated the groundswell of political discontent that had long flourished among the plaidie hills.
One of the most vocal of Caledonia's Rebel stalwarts was Ian Macdonald, Beinn Bhiorach's sole Intendant Associate and the Dirigent's own father...
Diamond.
Jack!
Her troubled mood vanished as she responded to his telepathic hail. For a few minutes they shared special thoughts on the intimate mode of farspeech. Persons other than young lovers would doubtless have found their mental conversation cloying and sentimental, to say nothing of hackneyed; but to Jack and Dorothea the ideas were new and precious and important, dealing as they did with the wonder of each other.
At last, however, his mental nuances reluctantly revealed that he had another reason for bespeaking her:
There's bad news, sweetheart. I'm on Okanagon. My Aunt Anne was involved in a serious accident here. Her starship crashed.
Oh, no! How is she?
Anne's alive but badly hurt. Unfortunately, her three exotic companions and the human pilot died.
I'm so sorry, Jack.
The worst part is, we think the crash was no accident
Oh, God. And it happened on Okanagon?
Yes. Anne and some of her associates from the Panpolity Directorate for Unity had come from Orb to confer with the Commander-in-Chief of the Twelfth Fleet, Owen Blanchard. There have been recent allegations by loyalist Magnates of the Concilium that the Twelfth is top-heavy with officers belonging to the Rebel party.
Yes, I know. And the allegations are true.
Anne and her colleagues were going to look into it. No big thing. She didn't want to get the spacers all torqued and testy. It was to be a discreet sampling of sentiment, to find out how the anti-Unity misunderstandings that seem to be so prevalent in this Sector might be corrected. In the case of the Fleet, Anne had considered revising the curriculum at Chelan Academy, plus instituting mandatory reeducation of the commissioned officers. The Directorate discussed all this months ago.
What did Blanchard think of that idea? I've heard that he's one of the top Rebel leaders. He and Annushka Gawrys were once lovers, you know. Some people say that the concept of an anti-Milieu political party originated with the two of them.
Anne never talked to Blanchard. Her courier ship went down the very morning that the first conference was scheduled. There's no doubt that the pilot deliberately caused the disaster. He might have been a suicidal anti-Unity fanatic--but there's another possibility. The ship was an express courier, and the pilot was a low-ranked adept-class operant, wearing a conventional CE control helmet. The hat could have been sneetched, coercing him to fly the ship into the ground. The passengers had no inkling that anything was wrong until it was too late to do anything about it. Anne only survived because she spun a crude metacreative cocoon around herself at the last minute. It didn't protect her completely, but it did the job. She'll be in a regen-tank for at least a year.
The poor woman ... What will happen to the Unity Directorate? Anne was its prime mover. It won't be the same without her. Who will take over the chair? You?
I don't think I'm right for the job, sweetheart. But never mind that. There's one last bit of info I haven't told you. Before Anne went switch-off, she made a last heroic effort and managed to bespeak a single intelligible word: Hydra.
!!!OhdearGod.
The Okanagon authorities notified the First Magnate. When Papa found out about the Hydra thing he told me, and I came zorching to Oky like a bat out of hell. Dirigent Castellane bent over backwards to cooperate with us and the Magistratum investigators.
Small wonder. Nobody's forgotten that earlier mystery accident on Okanagon that conveniently wiped out Pat's predecessor ... And now the First Magnate's pro-Unity sister is nearly killed and talks about Hydra! A very suggestive coincidence. Especially when one recalls the Alvarez flap six years ago.
How could I forget? It happened the very night we first met-- more or less face-to-face--at Marc's Halloween party.
Yes ... you wore that adorable clown suit, and I picked your giant brain like an overripe muskmelon.
And you conceived the idiotic notion of going to Okanagon with Uncle Rogi to interrogate Alvarez.
It wasn't idiotic! I had good evidence that the man was a Hydra.
Your idea was shit-for-brains stupid... even though you were right about the Hydra. Fortunately, I found out about your scheme and had Alvarez framed with a felony hit-and-run charge to put him temporarily out of circulation--and beyond your reach.
You what?
Diamond, you were only fifteen years old then! I couldn't let you endanger your life by playing clumsy detective games with a potential Hydra.
... Uncle Rogi! That damned old stool pigeon--he told you!
He did what he thought was best. What if the other Hydra-units had been there, backing up Alvarez when you tried to interrogate him? They would have nailed you to the wall.
Well, they weren't on Okanagon. They were on Earth, stalking me in Hawaii!
Yes. [Chilling recollection.]
I presume that the Remillard Dynasty snuffed Alvarez.
They had nothing whatsoever to do with his death. Actually, it was a very nasty surprise. I had hoped to mind-ream him for information about the identities of the other Hydra-units and Fury. After Alvarez died so mysteriously in his cell, Krondak evaluators from the Galactic Magistratum took over the phony hit-and-run investigation at the First Magnate's request--allegedly because Alvarez held such a high position on the Okanagon Dirigent's staff. The exotics managed to do superficial redactive examination of Patricia Castellane and her top people without their knowing it, but the lightweight probes failed to find proof that she or any of the others at Dirigent House on Okanagon were aware of the Hydra's real identity. They didn't find any other Hydras living on the planet, either. The Lylmik Supervisors and the First Magnate eventually put a lid on the entire Alvarez affair.
I'm not surprised. But now it seems that there is at least one other Hydra hiding on Okanagon. After all this time.
We really don't have the foggiest notion why the pilot crashed the starship, or what Anne meant when she said "Hydra." There's no way of questioning her until she comes out of the tank--and thank God for that. The last thing the Dynasty needs now is public speculation about a new Hydra attack.
Jack, you can't simply ignore the possibility.
Of course not. But Paul intends to keep the Hydra angle of the case sub rosa. Only the inner circle of Castellane's bureaucracy and the Fleet Commander himself knew about Anne's upcoming visit. If one or more of them is a Hydra-unit in disguise, we'll have the devil's own time proving it. There isn't enough evidence to justify an official inquiry of the planetary bigwigs--much less their full-scale mind-ream--and the law won't let us mount a fishing expedition. The Galactic Magistratum will continue to investigate the crash, but there'll be no Hydra hunt.
I see. Another cover-up.
For the good of the Milieu, darling.
Indubitably...
The real question is, why did the Hydra want to kill Anne?
She heads the Unity Directorate--and I told you that Fury has this daft notion of founding a Second Milieu with its own evil substitute for Unity.
Diamond, dear Diamond! Don't let your own terrible experiences with that monster color your right reason. Fury is only a single warped individual. It has just two Hydra-units left to act as its agents. The Concilium would know if any larger Fury-led cabal existed. The Lylmik would know! There is no such group.
There are the Rebels.
Their agenda bears no resemblance to Fury's--except that both want humanity out of the Milieu.
I've had the damned monster inside my mind and I know how seductive it can be. Fury doesn't have to coerce large numbers of people or lead them openly. All it has to do is secretly exploit human weakness and perversity. And eliminate persons who threaten its scheme.
Yes.