"Serrano Legacy - 03 - Winning Colors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

"I'll bet you have," Cecelia said, and smirked. Heris glared.
"Other thanthat ." But she had to chuckle; she had done it to herself. "I don't know why I thought you'd mellow after rejuvenation."
"I don't either," Cecelia said. "And I didn't. Mellow was never my virtue. But we've had even honors on this one; I won't say any more about that man's crewman, whatever he is."
"Thank you," Heris said. "May I ask why you were looking at that stallion whose hocks you didn't like?"
"Rotterdam," Cecelia said. "Those people did a lot for me; they're old friends, of course, butа.а.а. I want to do something for them. Of course I can share the bloodstock I have thereЧbut I've been doing that for years. What I'm looking for is some outcross lines that will broaden their base, that they couldn't possibly afford on their own."
"Is that all the planet does, raise horses?"
"Almost." Cecelia touched her screen, and brought up a graphic montage. "It's a combination of climate, terrain, and the accidents of discovery and development. Horses are useful in a variety of ways in colonization: self-replicating farm power, for instance. Pack animals in difficult terrain. Personal transportation. But they're displaced if industrialization provides alternatives. So usually you have poor planets with horsesЧworkhorsesЧand room to breed but no recreational bloodstock. Then you have industrial planets with a demand for recreational horses, but those horses squeezed into less and less land. Rotterdam was settled as an agricultural world, complete with draft horses. But its climate is far better suited to permanent pasturage than grain farming. Someone apparently obtained some bloodstock semen and began breeding recreational horses.а.а.а."
"How did they market them?" Heris asked. Horses, she remembered, shipped badly aboard spacecraft.
"With great difficulty. But somehow they got a colt nominated for a famous stakes race, and got him there alive and capable of running. More than capable. That was BuccinatorЧit was one of his descendants that I rode at Bunny's. I bought into his syndicate as a young womanЧ"
This made no sense to Heris, but the general plan did. "So you're going to find additional semen or whatever for your friends on Rotterdam.а.а.а."
"Right. I've got a dozen cubes to reviewЧordered them from bloodstock agentsЧand then we'll go take a look. So far most of Rotterdam's produce is semen and embryos. It's too far off the main shipways, and very rarely can a group get together to haul mature animals someplace. When I first set up my stud there, I'd planned to work on thatа.а.а. but things changed.а.а.а. Anyway, if they have the quality, the money will follow. And provide transport."
"Have you decided where to go first?"
"Wherrin Horse Trials. I've missed two of themЧno reason to miss this time. I should pick up more ideas there, breeders not yet with bloodstock agents, that sort of thing."
"I'd like to leave as soon as Koutsoudas is aboard," Heris said. "He's not the only problemЧI know you talked to your nephewЧand you know that Lord Thornbuckle has asked me to take on Brun."
"I'm willing," Cecelia said. "The lawyers can handle my suit just as well without me. Better perhaps. They say I interfere.а.а.а. I didn't know it would affect Ronnie and Raffaele."
Heris thought of saying what she thought about the lawsuit, but considering her own family relations she decided against it. She was hardly one to preach reconciliation with relatives.
а
Brigdis Sirkin hated being back on Rockhouse Major. Over on Minor, she had been able to pretend that they weren't in the same system where Amalie died. Here, every shop window, every bar, every slideway and bounce tube reminded her of Amalie. Here she had died, and into this station's recycler her physical cells had gone, to become the elements of something elseа.а.а. even this meal. She shoved it away, disgusted suddenly by the rich aroma of stew and bread.
"What's wrong, hon?" Meharry leaned across the crowded table. "Got a bug or something?"
She didn't want to answer. Meharry and the others had been so careful of her since the shooting, so sorry they'd believed a former shipmate and condemned her. They had organized that revenge on Amalie's counselor in hopes of cheering her up; they had enjoyed it a lot more than she did. She was tired of it, tired of having to be kind in return. What she really wanted, she thought, was to be somewhere else, with someone else, someone who wasn't part of the original mess. A face flickered in her memory a moment, the rich girl who had been Lady Cecelia's friend and pretended to be hers as well.
She scolded herself into a deeper depression. Probably she wouldn't see Brun again. Why would a girl like that want to be around her? It was silly to keep looking at the presents Brun had bought, as part of their pretense of courtship.
"Hi, there!" Sirkin looked up, startled. Meharry scowled, and Oblo grunted. Brun in the flesh, clearly excited and happy, in a soft blue silk jumpsuit that must have cost a fortune and brought out the blue of her eyes. Brun squeezed in next to Sirkin, with a chair she snagged from the next table. "We have to talk," she said.
Sirkin felt her face going hot. There was no need for this; that other game was long over.
"And how did you find our humble eatery?" Meharry asked, with a bite to her voice.
Brun smiled, smugly. "I asked where theSweet Delight 's crew usually ate. Since I'm now in the crewЧ"
"You're not!" Oblo stared at her wide-eyed, then shook his head. "I wonder what the captain's thinking of."
"My father," Brun said, and reached for a hunk of bread. "He thinks I need seasoning before I'm turned loose on an unsuspecting universe, and he thinks Captain Serrano is the right person to provide it. And you, of course." She grinned around the table. The others all stared at Brun, and Sirkin hoped no one would notice how fast her own pulse was beating. She didn't know yet if she was happy about this or not, but she couldn't be indifferent.
"I hope you're ready to go aboard and start working," Meharry said. "Captain's told us to be ready to ship out at a half-shift notice."
"Fine with me," Brun said. "I've already put my stuff aboard."
"It's called 'duffel,'а" Meharry said.
"Duffel." Brun smiled at her, blue eyes wide. "Are you really angry, or just pretending? Because I'm not really an idiotЧI actually have some ship time."
"On what?" Oblo said quickly, hushing Meharry. Brun's grin widened.
"On a shit-shoveler," she said. "Caring for critters."
Oblo snorted. "That's not ship timeа.а.а. that's just work. Proves you can work, butЧwe'll see about you and the ship."
Sirkin watched the others watching Brun, and wondered. She felt less alone now, less the one being watched. And Brun still gave her a good feeling, as if they might really be friends.
* * *
Esteban Koutsoudas arrived at the shipline in a plain gray jumpsuit with aSweet Delight arm patch already on it. That didn't surprise Heris. What did surprise her, a little, was that he'd made it here alive if Livadhi was right about how much danger he was in. Surely it would have been easier to take him on the station than on her ship. If notЧshe didn't want to think about that.
"Esteban Koutsoudas, sir," the man said. He carried an ordinary kitbag slung over his shoulder, and a couple of handcarries. She would have passed him in the concourse without a second thoughtЧjust another traveler, neither rich nor broke, with an intelligent but unremarkable face. Until he smiled, when his eyebrows went up in peaks.
"Glad to have you aboard," Heris said, though she still wasn't sure of that. "Mr. Petris will show you your quarters," Heris said, by way of taking up a moment of time.
"Commander Livadhi sent you this," Koutsoudas said, handing over a datacube. "And he said I was to assist you any way you liked."
Right. Turn a superb longscan communications tech loose on her equipmentа.а.а. could she trust this man? Yet she lusted for his expertise; she had suspected for years that Koutsoudas was the secret of Livadhi's success in more than one engagement.
"When you've stowed your gear," she said, "Mr. Petris will introduce you to the crew. Then we'll see." She left a message for Lady Cecelia, who had gone off to talk to her lawyers again. Heris could believe they wanted her out of touch, at least for a while. She had been angry with her own familyЧshe still was, if she thought about itЧbut it had never occurred to her to sue them. The rich are different, she reminded herself, as she notified Traffic Control that she would need a place in the outbound stack.
а
Maneuvering in and out of Rockhouse Major had begun to seem routine; Heris found her mind wandering even as she recited the checklist and spoke to the captain of the tug that snared the yacht's bustle. They were leaving behind the problems of the new government, Cecelia's family, Ronnie's romantic problems, and whatever had been chasing Koutsoudas. AheadЧahead, the frivolity of horse trials, though she dared not call it frivolity to Lady Cecelia.
Her ownership of the yacht had begun to sink past surface knowledgeа.а.а. having to pay the docking fees and the tug fees out of her own account certainly made an impression. True, Lady Cecelia had prepaid the charter fee to the Wherrin Trials, but stillЧHeris hoped she understood how to calculate what to charge.
They had an uneventful system transit, and the jump transition went smoothly as well. Day by day, Sirkin seemed brighter; she and Brun hung around together when they were off-shift. Heris hoped this would last, at least through the voyage. She didn't want to have to deal with young passions unrequited, not with her own relationship going through a difficult period. She and Petris still found it awkward to get together aboard the ship; the intellectual knowledge that their situation was now different could not quite eradicate the habit of years.
She had expected Koutsoudas to be an unsettling presence, but oddly enough, he turned out to be very incurious about his shipmates. Did he already know (or think he knew) everything, or did he not care? Heris found it difficult to believe he didn't care. Was he focussed only on the mechanical, on ship identities? Unlikely: she knew from rumor that he carried with him an analysis of opposing commanders. Perhaps he was here not to be kept out of someone's eye, but to keep her under someone else's. No, that was paranoia. She hoped. She wished her paranoia button had a "half on" setting, just in case.
а
Brun scowled over the maintenance manual for ship circuitry. "I wasn't fond of ohms and volts two years ago, and they aren't any friendlier now."
Sirkin looked up from her own reading, a year's worth ofCurrent Issues in Navigation on cube. "You didn't realize you'd have to learn what you were doing?"