"May, Julian - Galactic Milieu 3 - Magnificat" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)
--not a mental attack no something purely physical laser-weapon or firearm longrange or obliterate with micronuke or even purщe them with sonicdisruptor--
Despair. If I had only arrived in time to assist that fucking idiot Parni! If only YOU had helped him kill Rogi before the secret was passed on.
I will do whatever you command. But how will you avoid detection now? How will you avoid extinction?
Beloved Fury I put my trust in you ... Shall I return to Okanagon then and resume my work among the Rebel leadership there?
!!! Fury is THIS the great plan?
I want him. Not as another Hydra but as a slave.
Goodbye dear Fury.
They timed it to perfection, reaching the Hawaiian Islands just as the sun touched the sea in the west, descending in a cloudless sky, hovering just above the light-painted water until the dazzling solar globe slipped down, down, into the horizon's coin-slot. And as the last bit of it vanished--
Green flash.
"Wonderful!" she exclaimed, bouncing up and down in her seat like a delighted child.
"Make a wish," Jack said.
Dorothea squeezed her eyes comically shut, then popped them open. Her mind smiled. "Do I have to tell?"
"Not if you want the wish to come true."
So she kept silent, knowing that he would never come into her mind without her explicit invitation. Her wish was Let me love him more. For in every nuptial pairing, one of the partners has a passion greater than that of the other, placing a heavier burden of love-sustenance on the one less engaged ...
They were silent for a time, side by side in the cabin of the little starship, hands joined. He had changed into plain khaki pants and a loose puananala shirt for the honeymoon flight, and she wore denim shorts, sandals, and a blouse of soie-argentщe with the sleeves rolled up.
"I'm glad we saw the green flash together," she said. "It's bound to be a good omen and we Scots are very keen on such things. I've heard about the sunset color-flash phenomenon, but on Caledonia the atmosphere is too full of moisture and volcanic dust for them to occur. When I came to Kauai before, I was too distracted by other things to think of watching for it."
Shyly, she probed the vestibulum of his inviting mind to find the meaning of the Hawaiian word. It meant not only "teacher" but "lover." She lifted one of his hands to her masked face and he felt a kiss. "I'm glad this island will be our home on Earth," she said. "New Hampshire is beautiful, but it's a little too much like Callie: stern and rugged and indomitable. Not that I don't love my planet and expect you to love it, too. But it'll be good to have a gentler place to come to now and then, when things become especially difficult."
And they will, their minds conceded. As the pressures of our work distract us, as the Rebellion intensifies, and as the deadly paradox of Fury is forced toward a final resolution.
"Damn that Rogi," Jack said in a low voice. "Why did he have to pick our wedding day to spring his nasty surprise? ... Did you notice that I redacted you to keep you from becoming too upset?"
She uttered a sly laugh. "No more than you noticed that I redacted you for the same reason! Poor old Uncle Rogi. He didn't set out deliberately to spoil things. It was really the first chance he had to talk to us privately." Her tone became somber. "Do you think his mind was recalling actual events in the case of the Hydra attacks?"
Jack hesitated. "He believed in the murderous fish just as he believed in Anne's story about Denis being Fury. There's no easy way that you and I can determine whether or not Rogi psychozapped Parnell in the hotel bar as he said he did, but I've told Paul about it and left it to him to investigate the matter or ignore it."
"And the Denis/Fury theory?"
"It could very well be true. I'm afraid we'll have to proceed as though it is true."
"Rogi could be suffering from delusions."
"No. He's a strange old duck, but he's far from delusional. He does possess extremely strong latent creativity, so it's perfectly plausible that he might have zorched Parnell. And there's something else about Rogi that you should know: He believes he has some sort of peculiar relationship with the Lylmik. Both Marc and Denis have commented on it in passing--disbelievingly, of course--but I think Rogi may be telling the truth. There's the Great Carbuncle, for instance. For years he's joked that the Lylmik gave it to him. Did you deepscan the thing when he lent it to you for good luck during the diatreme event?"
"Why, no..."
"I did. And right at the center of the red diamond sphere is a sizable molecular anomaly that could be an infinitesimal natural flaw--but is more likely an artifact The Carbuncle is some kind of machine: maybe a subspace transmitter, maybe much more. No conventional Milieu science I know anything about could have produced it. But the Lylmik could have."
"Jack, this all seems incredible. I've rooted around in Rogi's mind myself, you know. He's a borderline neurotic, uncomfortable with his operancy. His habitual overindulgence in alcohol is certainly a symptom of personality imbalance--"
"Rogi's not a true alcoholic. He abuses the booze when it suits him and lets it alone when he's of a mind to. The man is an atavism, Diamond. An old-fangled type we don't see very often in the Galactic Age."
"He's a gormless auld whaup!" But her Scots insult was overlaid with grudging fondness. "And I don't see how we can commit ourselves to this Fury integration project solely on his unsupported mnemonic data. I really think we should wait until Anne comes out of the tank. Then you and I can deep-probe her in metaconcert. We'd not only corroborate or refute Rogi's picture of the situation, but we might even be able to determine whether or not Anne herself is Fury."
"It would mean waiting at least a year," Jack said, shaking his head.
"Could we complete the preliminaries for Denis's healing operation in less time? I've got to ream the Fury sig out of Rogi without damaging his dilapidated psyche, you've got to design a brand-new kind of CE brainboard and a self-contained power supply for the E18 helmet, and both of us have to work out a unique and untried metaconcert involving both coercion and redaction."
"We could do all that in less than six months. The only tricky part is roping the Dynasty into the project and training them to use the CE hats."
Her eyes, fixed on the fading sunset glow, were full of misgiving. "The procedure with Denis will be extremely dangerous. Some of the metaconcert participants could be killed unless we build special safeguards into the program."
"All the more reason for dealing with this thing as soon as possible. Before the other troubles the Milieu is facing come to a head--and are aggravated by Fury. Weren't you the one who told me that the monster might exploit the Rebels, or foment God knows what other kind of mischief?"
"Jack, we're proposing to endanger the lives of nine important Magnates of the Concilium--including the First Magnate himself--all on the say-so of a bibulous old gaffer!"
"I've known Rogi since I was in the womb. I still can't predict when he'll play the fuddleheaded eccentric and when he'll do something noble and unselfish, but I do know that he's dead honest. He loves me and I love him. Marc feels nearly the same way about Uncle Rogi as I do--and I suspect that Denis does, too."
"So do I," she admitted, turning away from him, "most of the time."
They sat side by side in silence. Dusk was falling with tropical suddenness and both Venus and Jupiter were visible as evening stars. It was going to be a clear, moonless night.
"We must go ahead on this, sweetheart," Jack said quietly.
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