"John Morressy - Rimrunners Home" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morressy John)

He wondered whether Watts had called, or Korry, or Jemma, or some officious
underling running errands for his chief; and he wondered why there had been only
a call, and no one had come bursting in on him, and how long it would be before
they dared that.

After a simple dinner, he settled in the middle of the hollie and sampled the
offerings. For lack of anything more interesting, he selected "Evening on the
Town (Comedy)."

A crowded room phased into existence around him, filled with the low murmur of
muted conversations, the muffled clink and clatter of dining and drinking,
occasional distant laughter, unobtrusive music in the background. A light blazed
some five meters ahead and a young man in a gaudy cloak, leaning heavily on a
long staff, limped into sight.

From his updating, Vanderhorst recognized the man as an eccentric, one of the
popular entertainers of the period. Eccentrics were story-tellers, descendants
of the old standup comics and flatscreeners. By convention, they all affected a
minor physical disability and pretended to great earnestness in their delivery.

"Here's the latest from the colonies," the limping man said, clasping both hands
around his staff and thrusting his head forward. "Sixty-three lunies have
kidnapped the Vice President of Terralune Gravitronics. One did the actual
kidnapping. The other sixty-two are still trying to write the ransom note."

Laughter rose around Vanderhorst. He did not join in. The eccentric brandished
his staff and the laughter died.

"The lunies complain that everything we send up costs too much. They say we're
getting rich off them down here," he said, looking about with a challenging
glare. "What do they expect? Every tube of soap has to come with an instruction
program."

The laughter began again. Vanderhorst cut it short with a jab of his finger. The
crowd vanished, and he was alone in the circular room, in silence and faint
light.

He admired the lunar colonists and did not enjoy jokes that belittled them. The
worst things never change, he reflected. The staybehinds send others out to do
their sweatwork and watch over their cozy world, and begrudge them so much as a
"Thanks." His father had told him how the staybehinds had treated veterans of
his own long-forgotten war. It was no different then. But lunies and rimrunners
had a deadlier enemy, and no hope of victory. Space always won in the end.
Downsiders could not understand them, so they derided them.

Vanderhorst's mood grew sour. The humor of this age angered him. He had heard
those jokes before; they were undying, and he despised those who laughed at
mockery of better men and women. In the sixties the butt was the shackers, the
swarms of poor that encircled every urban complex. Shackers were fair game for
scorn: the methmen who recycled human waste were called "Shackie chefs" by