"Garbage Day" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mccarthy Wil)

with, it's multiple copies of every counselor on the planette. Plus the Secret
Service and Royal Constabulary."
"Yeah," Bascal agreed, "ten hours from now." That was the speed-of-light
round-trip time from here to the Queendom proper.
"The fax gate itself is protected by your own Palace Guards. They won't let you
leave."
"I don't need to," Bascal said. He glanced sidelong at Rock Dengle, who was
still struggling valiantly to stand upright. "There's already been a regrettable
incident here. We're prepared for there to be more if you interfere with us."
"Cancel the alarm," Rock advised, throwing his voice behind Bascal's. "Let 'em
in the office. We don't outnumber them much, and they want to call Welfare, I
say fine. Got nothing to hide. Parents need to know about this."
D'rector Jed didn't respond to that, but when the boys started moving, en masse,
in the direction of the office, he didn't try to stop them, either. So they
walked right past both of him and over the horizon, the little sun slipping
behind the planette as they went. Small planets were like that Ч times of day
were little places you could walk to. Here, the stars shone down like a
vindication from God himself.
Superficially, the office looked like one more log cabin, especially in the
dark. It was larger, though, and the light spilling out through the windows came
from a proper wellstone ceiling, not a damn kerosene lamp. And once they got the
door open and mobbed their way inside, the illusion was shattered completely.
This could be anywhere in the Queendom Ч the bathroom had a flush toilet, for
crying out loud. A further sign of the basic injustices here.
The fax was in a back room, a kind of entryway with no door. The camp had
several other fax gates whose activation they could maybe have demanded, but
this was the only one known to be on all the time, with a hardlink gated
directly to the New Systemwide Collapsiter Grid, the Nescog, that could get
their message Ч or even their material selves Ч out of here in substantially
less than the blink of an eye.
Unfortunately, as promised, the gate was guarded by a pair of gleaming Palace
Guard robots, their blank metal faces and sexless metal bodies both unreadable
and immobile. They were here, no doubt, to keep unauthorized persons from
entering Camp Friendly and harming, in some way, the Queendom's only prince.
Although, Conrad mused, the fax software could probably do that all by itself Ч
filter out any images not specifically authorized here. Were these guards
redundant, a hedge against someone corrupting the system somehow? Were they also
parental spies, sent here to keep Bascal in line? Jed had certainly seemed to
think so.
As bodyguards they were certainly intimidating enough; Conrad had little doubt
they could burst from this room and be anywhere on the planette within minutes.
The boys stood well back, milling around in the outer room, a few of the bravest
eyeing these monsters from the "safe" distance of three or four meters.
Bascal alone seemed unimpressed, striding in toward the fax and gesturing at the
two robots. "You, you, come with me. We're evacuating Ч the planette is on fire.
Come on."
He stepped right up to the fax and said, "Nearest emergency center." The robots
hesitated for a barely perceptible moment, then the first of them, with alarming
fluidity and grace, turned and leaped through the gate, vanishing in a puff of
quantum dislocation.