"Moorcock, Michael - The Blood Red Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

It was so wrong - wrong!

Implacably, the impossible system was shifting in. Would it stay long enough for them to get to it? And could they reach it? If only he knew a little more about it. It was a big gamble he was taking and there was just a shin chance of it paying off.

Only he knew what was at stake. That knowledge was a burden he had had to strengthen himself to bear. Most men could not have done so.

As he walked along, glancing at the wretches who had so hopefully come to Migaa, he wondered if it was worth the attempt after all. But he shrugged to himself. You had to accept that it was worth it, he told himself.

There were none there who might have been properly described as extra-terrestrials. One of the discoveries Man had made when settling the galaxy was that he represented the only highly-developed, intelligent life-form. There were other types of animal life, but Earth, throughout the galaxy, had been the only planet to bear a beast that could reason and invent. This was an accepted thing amongst most people, but philosophers still wondered and marvelled and there were many theories to explain the fact.

Two years previously Renark had suddenly resigned from his position as Warden of the Rim Worlds. It had been an important position and his resignation had given rise to speculation and gossip. The visit of an alien spaceship, supposedly an intergalactic craft, had not been admitted by the Galactic Lords. When pressed for information they had replied ambiguously. Only Renark had seen the aliens, spent much time with them.

He had given no explanation to the Gee-lords and even now they still sought him out, trying to persuade him to take over a job which he had done responsibly and imaginatively. Space-sensers were rare, rarer even than other psi-talents - and a Guide Senser of Renark's stature was that much rarer. There were only a few G.S. men in the entire galaxy and their talents were in demand. For the most part they acted as pilots and guides on difficult runs through hyper-space, keeping, as it were, an anchor to the mainland and giving ships exact directions how, where and when to enter normal space. They were also employed on mapping the galaxy and any changes which occurred in it. They were invaluable to a complicated, galaxy-travelling civilisation.

So the Gee-lords had begged Renark to remain Warden of the Rim even if he would not tell them who the visitors to Golund had been. But he had refused, and two years had been spent in collecting a special knowledge of what little information was known about the Shifter. In the end they had resorted to sending the Geepees after him, but with the help of Talfryn and Asquiol he had so far evaded them. He prayed they wouldn't come to Migaa before the Shifter materialised.

Renark had fitted his ship with the best equipment and instruments available.

This equipment, in his eyes, included the dynamic, if erratic, Asquiol and the easy-going Paul Talfryn. Both had helped him in the past because they admired him. He, in turn, responded to the sense of loyalty for them that he felt - and knew he could work best with these two men.

Several hundred ships were clustered in the spaceport. Many had been there for years, but all of them were kept in constant readiness for the time when the Shifter might be sighted.

Certain ships had been there for a century or more, their original owners having died, disappointed and frustrated, never having achieved their goal.

Renark's great spacer was a converted Police Cruiser which he had bought cheaply - and illegally - rebuilt and re-equipped. It could be ready for take-off in half a minute. It was also heavily armed. It was against the law to own a police ship and also to own an armed private vessel. The Union owned and leased all commercial craft.

The spacer required no crew. It was fully automatic and had room for thirty passengers. Already, since landing, Renark had been pestered by people offering huge sums to guarantee them passage to the Shifter, but he had refused. Renark had little sympathy for most of those who gathered in Migaa. They would have received more mercy from the enlightened Legal Code, of which the Union was justly proud, than from Renark of the Rim.

Although Migaa itself was thick with criminals of all kinds, there were few in relation to the huge human population of the galaxy. For nearly two centuries the galaxy had been completely at peace, although the price of peace had, in the past, been a rigid and authoritarian rule which had, in the last century, thawed into the liberal government which now had been elected to serve the galaxy.

Renark had no hatred for the Union which pestered him. He had served it loyally until he had acquired that certain knowledge which he had withheld from the Galactic Lords. They had asked many times for the information he possessed, but he had refused; and he was cautious, also, never to let his whereabouts be known.

He glanced up into the blazing white sky as if expecting to see a Geese patrol falling down upon them.

Slowly, the two men walked across the pad towards the cruiser.

Mechanics were at work on Renark's ship. They had long since completed their initial check and found the ship completely spaceworthy. But Renark had not been satisfied. Now they checked again. Renark and Talfryn entered the elevator and it took them into the centre of the ship, to the control cabin.

Talfryn looked admiringly around the well-equipped cabin. He had the scientist's eye that could appreciate the ingenuity, the skill, the energy, the pure passion which had gone into its construction.

Once, a year before, Renark had said in a talkative moment: Take note of these instruments, Talfryn - they represent man's salvation. They represent the power of the mind to supersede the limitations of its environment, the power of every individual man to control, for the first time, his own destiny.'

Renark hadn't been referring to his own particular instruments and Talfryn knew that.

Now, Talfryn thought, the mystique attached to science had made it at once a monster and a salvation. People believed it capable of anything, because they had no idea any more what it was. And they tended to think the worst of it.

More men like Renark were needed - men who could not take the simple workings of a turbine for granted, yet, at the same time, could take the whole realm of science for granted.

Just then another thought occurred to Talfryn - a thought more immediately applicable to their present situation. He said: