"Elizabeth Moon - Serrano 3 - Winning Colors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

some things, if that's acceptable."
"Good." Lord Thornbuckle smiled at her. "On top of everything else, I'll be glad to have her out of pocket while
the political situation is so uncertain."
The country house of Kemtre Lord Altmann,
formerly king of the Familias Regnant
"I don't see why you can't understand," Kemtre said, trying not to breathe heavily. "They're your sons as
much as mine."
"They're no one's sons," his wife said. Although she seemed to lean on the end of the table, elbows on either
side of a tray of fancifully carved fruits, that was illusion, a matter of expensive communications equipment
synchronizing her image from past breakfasts with her voice from very far away. "Certainly not mine, and not
yours either, if you only knew it. They're clones, constructs, human only in genome. You were never a father
to them; I was never a mother."
He pressed his fingers to his temples, a gesture that had been effective in Council meetings. It had not
worked with her for years, and it did not work now, not least because she did not have the visual display on
her console turned on . . . he kept hoping to see the telltale red light turn green. He wanted to meet her
eyesтАФher real eyes, not those of the construct, and convince her with his sincerity. "They're all we've got,"
he said. "They could be our sons, if you'd onlyтАФ"
"They're grown," she said. "They're not little boys. They're bad copies of Gerel . . . was he the only one you
cared about?"
Of course not, he wanted to say. He had said it before, just as they had had this argument before in the
weeks since his resignation. At first face-to-face, then down the length of that long dining table, then by the
various communications devices required by the increasingly great physical distances between them as she
removed herself from his demands.
"Please," he said.
"No." The faint hollow noise of a live connection ended; the construct sat immobile, waiting for his finger to
extinguish its imitation of life. He put his thumb down and cursed. She wanted him to give it up, deal with the
loss of his sons, get on with whatever life was left him. He couldn't do that, not until he had at least tried to
get the clones to cooperate. They were the only sons he had now; he couldn't just give them up.
The Boardroom of the Benignity
of the Compassionate Hand
"I don't see any reason to butcher the cash cow," said the Senior Accountant. "Breed her, and we'll have
more calves to send to market."
"She's a shy breeder," muttered one of the diplomatic subordinates, who should have kept quiet. It was his
last mistake.
When the meeting resumed, several people walked across the damp patch on the carpet as if nothing had
happened. It wasn't unusual, and it didn't really reflect on Sasimo, whose prot├йg├й had been unwise. Every
senior man present had discovered that a first appearance in the Boardroom could unsettle a youngster
previously considered promising.
"Still, he had a point," the Chairman said. No one asked who, or what point; those who couldn't figure it out
didn't belong there. "The Familias walks like a tart, and talks like a tart, but carries a hatpin in her purse." The
hatpin being, as they all knew, the Regular Space Service's unbought fraction, which they knew down to the
level of cook's assistants.
After a respectful silence, the Senior Accountant coughed politely and began again. "It is a short hatpin, not
long enough to reach the heart of a strong man. A little risk, a prick perhaps, andтАФbetter a marriage than a
disgrace, eh?"
"Quite so," said the Chairman. "If it is only a flesh wound. Perhaps our admiral would review the situation?"
But indeed, the situation looked good. Not only were so many Fleet personnel on the Compassionate Hand
payroll, as it were, but they had been placed into critical positions. Given a good start, with new forward
bases increasing the number of jump points they could reach undetected, the Regular Space Service should
be immobilized by uncertainty as well as internal problems.