"Ardath Mayhar - Shock Treatment" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mayhar Ardath)

SHOCK TREATMENT
the account of
GRANARY'S WAR

By Ardath Mayhar




copyright ┬й by Ardath Mayhar, July 2000
Cover Art by Jenny Dixon
ISBN 1-58608-025-3
Rocket Edition 1-58608-244-2
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com




Chapter One
The Silent Room



He did not look like a madman. His thick-lensed glasses screened thoughtful silver eyes, and his face was
unlined --too smooth for a man in his middle fifties. Yet something about his hands was vaguely
frightening. The thick fingers gripped things too tightly, and the back-slanted thumbs, which earlier
generations on another world had called the murderer's thumb, were disturbingly powerful.

As he studied the maps that moved on the console forming the tabletop, bending to squint at the
constantly changing numbers and symbols that reflected engagements, casualties, supply-lines, and
troops, his hand beat time to music from a hidden speaker's antique music, played on ancient instruments.
The melody was too delicate, one would have thought, for the taste of the Commander of Station.

Behind the console table/desk, the wall was filled with monitors, which revealed all the approaches to the
complex Standish called his Stronghold. Though he knew that other watchrooms were manned by people
trained to note anything even remotely threatening, the Commander trusted nobody to be sufficiently
alert. There were many who wanted his

death, but he did not intend to die.

Theron Standish intended to survive, no matter what it took. He intended to unify the loose confederation
of agricultural Granges forming this colony with the central force that was Station. His grandmother hated
him for that, he knew. She had spent her life assuring the autonomy of each portion of this incredibly
fertile world.

Even as he thought it, he whirled and stared into a monitor to the left of the wall. Something was moving
there, and his peripheral vision had caught the movement. Was it his grandmother, come again to torment
him?