"Liaden Universe - 07 - I Dare" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Steve)

"OK. But there's stuff you could be helping me out withЧto both our benefits. You know your equations, don't you?"

Gods, but didn't he. When he was a child, he had thought it a gameЧUncle Daav, Cousin Er ThomЧeven Luken!Чwould throw out a partial piloting sentence and applaud lavishly when he completed it properly. On those occasions when he missed his lineЧ often, at firstЧthey would gently recite the correct response, and applaud again when he told it back without error.

He had done the same with his own child; teaching him the nursery rhymes of pilotsЕ

Pat Rin looked up at the bulk of Cheever McFarland.Master Pilot , he reminded himself, and sighed. "I know my equations, Mr. McFarland. Yes."

"Good. I can't force you to do it, but I think it'd be best for the shipЧmy judgment as Master Pilot, while we're being clear on stuffЧif you'd sit second for me."

The best interest of the ship must carry all before it. Pilot or no, the care and keeping of ships was bred into his bones. Korval, after all, was ships.

Pat Rin bowed, novice to master.

"Very well, Mr. McFarland, as you feel it is a matter of ship's safety, I will sit in the second seat."

"Great," Cheever said, and stretched, arms over his head, hands brushing the ceiling of the ship. "I'm gonna go get a shower and some caffeine. Meanwhile, you call the tower and get us moved to a hotpad, OK? Don't forget to tell 'em about that orientation to ventral."

So saying he turned and exited the bridge, leaving Pat Rin glaring at nothing.

After a time, he sighed, and moved over to the board to input the request to the tower.

Day 283
Standard Year 1392
Liad
Department of Interior Command Headquarters

Satisfied, Commander of Agents closed the field report.

Korval's strengthsЧthat it husbandedЧone might say, hoardedЧships; that it valued the skills and reactions of pilots above any other skill a clanmember might possess; that they deliberately bred for pilots, thus propelling themselves to a pinnacle of the typeЕ

Those strengths had hidden a notable weakness.

Pat Rin yos'Phelium, heir to Kareen, elder cousin to Val Con, who should by all right of blood and kinship, now stand as Korval HimselfЧexcepting only that he was not a pilot.

Crippled, in Korval's eye, he had been cast aside, dismissed to a wastrel life of spoilt self-indulgence.

The Department of the Interior, however, knew just how to value Pat Rin yos'Phelium, and his place within the Plan.

Commander of Agents smiled slightly and lay his hand on the closed folder.

Despite that the Department found it necessary to its own success to remove Korval from the board, yet it was true that the world, in some measure, required Korval. Lose a clan which held controlling interest in a triple-dozen industries on-planet, which controlled the pilots guild, funded the Scouts, which owned outright fifteen trading vessels and unnumbered smaller craft, not to speak of the yards which serviced them? The planetary economy trembled at the whisper of such calamity. Why, Korval owned the very dies from which cantra pieces were struck, only leasing them to the Moneyers Guild in twelve-year renewals stretching back to the time of the first Val Con yos'Phelium, Cantra's heir.

In any wise, it was no part of the Department's Plan that Liad should be made bankrupt. It was all to the Department's good that Liaden economy flourish and expand.

Thus, if the economy demanded a Korval, then a Korval there would be.

Day 284
Standard Year 1392