"Michael McCollum - Man of Renaissance" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

The sound of a distant catfight brought Beckwith back to the problem at hand. Unable to postpone it
any longer, he slipped out of bed and groped in darkness for his leather case. His fingers quickly found
the hidden catches that freed the false bottom from the valise. He withdrew a garment from the secret
compartment. What little radiance fell through his open window was sufficient to show the darksuit to be
a pool of deeper black against the near stygian dark around him.

Beckwith carefully climbed inside, zipping the light amplifier hood over his face as a last step. He was
now encased in shadow, able to see, but not be seen.

He turned back to the case, working more quickly now that the world was lit in a bright, greenish glow.
The hidden compartment yielded up a holster and needle gun that he belted around his middle. Two
small rectangles the size of dominoes went into his breast pocket. He visually inventoried the half dozen
tiny vials in the bottom of the case, checking them for any telltale signs of breakage before carefully
resealing the hidden compartment. The floorboards creaked slightly as he moved to the open window.

There were two guards roaming more or less at random through the courtyard below. Both were fairly
distant from the hacienda and Beckwith took advantage of this good fortune to lever himself up onto the
tiled roof of the hacienda. Once there, he catfoooted his way to the far side of the building, the side
closest to the Sonoran bivouac. After a moment's hesitation at the edge of the roof, he concluded that his
best avenue of approach was atop the village wall. Better to be silhouetted against the black sky than the
whitewashed walls of the town -- assuming that he did not break his neck in the process.

He thanked the Gods of Fission that this village was too poor to top their wall with metal spikes or
barbed wire as he moved in a balancing act cum hundred-meter dash along the narrow, impromptu
footpath. In a matter of seconds, he found himself overlooking a small sea of tents.

The Sonoran encampment was a sturdy little fortress with an air of permanence about it. On one side,
the conquerors had used the village wall -- the same wall where Beckwith now squatted. Everywhere
else, they were building new walls from native rock cemented together with adobe. By the progress they
had already made, Beckwith judged their annexation of Nuevo Tubac would be complete within another
month.

The thought left a sour taste in his mouth. He liked Ynicente Galway and the people of this village. It
would be a tragedy to see them fall under Juan Pablo's iron heel. The real tragedy, of course, would be
losing Esperanza Galway. He had watched that precocious little girl for nearly ten years now with an
interest far from avuncular. The Public Health Service's greatest need was for good people and Darol
Beckwith had planned to recruit Espe Galway for the training academy on his next visit. Now there was
a good chance that would never happen. Keeping this one pueblo out of Sonoran hands was not his
concern at the moment. Nor was securing Espe for the service. His current mission went far beyond the
mere delivery of a few hundred likable people from the bonds of slavery.

Beckwith slid down from the wall, chiding himself for the nasty tendency towards morose thoughts he
had developed lately. Then he hadn't time for such thoughts as he padded quietly between rows of tents,
slowly making his way toward two large machines parked at the center of the encampment. A tall
antenna mast rose between them.

He hid among the tents, acutely conscious of the snores around him, and gauged the moment when the
two guards pacing in front of the silent machines would be at the farthest reaches of their circuits. Then it
was a swift, crouching run through a dark gap between watch fires, and a rolling dive into the shadows