"Bc23" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry & Pournelle)

"Eighty-seven days ago."
Three months ago. Edgar had been fiddling with Cassandra, likely at Aaron's instigation, giving the Second more freedom to explore.
"Might as well join the madness," she said, and brought the skeeter down a hundred meters away from the moving mountain. The Scribe didn't look able to move quickly, but she didn't want it accidentally changing course and crushing her skeeter.
She was glad to see Katya up and around and looking so damned chipper. She didn't completely agree with Justin's choice of women, but what the hell, she didn't really have anything to say about it, did she?
The wind came cleanly through her lungs as she jogged toward them through armpit-high grass. The rapidity of her approach seemed to attract Momma Mountain's attention, and it turned its eye sluggishly toward her. Taking her time. It was impossible to imagine something like this having any potential for speed.
Justin was only ten feet away from it, playing his camera over four sets of trapped bones. One was no more than several joints of a grendel's tailbones. The others were distorted mummies.
It seemed clear what had happened. Momma Mountain had approached the river to drink. Each grendel in turn, or all together, had made a suicidal charge and gotten stuck. Each had thrashed . . . that one seemed to have actually torn some of the plates loose, but it had done it no good. It hung limply, its bones cracked, as if it had shattered itself in those final convulsions. As if it was too powerful to live.
The great herbivore's lip rippled steadily, mowing two-meter-high grass.
"We have to see what's going on under there," Justin said. "Drop a camera--"
"Harden it," Jessica said, as if they'd been talking all along. "It'll get chewed up."
"Yeah, hardened, with a light--"
"A little light. Camera set for low light."
"Right, it must be permanent night under there. We don't want to blind . . . a whole damn ecology under there, I bet. Cassandra, we need that camera. How long to make one up?"
"That will depend on priorities. The practical answer is that I can fabricate it in Camelot and put it aboard the next supply shuttle."
"Tell Edgar."
One of the pig things came close, evidently emboldened by the nearness of Momma Mountain. Jessica took a step toward it, and it scampered away.
Justin's expression was hard to read. He said, "Watch this."
Katya echoed that. "Watch this," she said, nearly glowing with pleasure as Justin crouched, extending his hand. It held a handful of balled grass. He was very still.
At first the snouter just stared at him, but then it came close, and then closer, and then she couldn't believe it, but the thing was eating out of his hand. It had actually begun to lick his hand when it suddenly shook its head, startled at its own boldness, and backed away.
Justin brushed his hands off on his pants.
"What was that all about?" she asked.
"Dunno."
"You taste like a meat eater," Katya said, and licked his ear. He laughed, and put his arm around her.
Jessica found herself feeling enormously irritated. "Well--is it safe to bring the herd through here?"
"Safe as houses."
"We've got a water hole up ahead. Half a day." She didn't know why she said the next thing, but she did. "It was mapped as a grendel hole last month. You want to be in on the kill?"
"Sure." He kissed Katya briefly. "Katya--you take the trike, I'm going for a little skeeter ride."
Katya looked at Jessica, smiled, then pulled Justin around for a real honey of a kiss, long and deep and sincere as hell.
Jessica decided that she definitely didn't like Katya.

The long, low sweep of the hills tilted and tilted again as the skeeter bobbed on the air currents, carrying Justin and Jessica to the east.
"Well," Jessica said finally, after about five minutes of silence. "It certainly seems as if the two of you are getting along well."
"Well, somebody's got to be a sex object around here. Jess, how about calling them 'Harvester' instead of 'Scribe'? Now we know what it is."
She grinned mildly, her hands tight on the control. A flicker of evil intent tickled the back of Justin's mind, and he decided to push onward. "I think maybe she's feeling her age. You know, some women feel that if they haven't had a child by twenty, they're missing out somehow. Ridiculous, of course."
She glanced at him as if to say: Do you think it's going to be that easy, bud?
"Personally, I think that a woman's got until at least twenty-five. What about you and Aaron?"
She snorted. "Oh, you know better than that--"
"Well, you wouldn't even have to carry the child yourself. You could donate an egg, and he could donate a sperm--I assume it would only take one, I mean, as staggeringly virile as Aaron is . . . "
"Oh, shut up."
"But Geographic has everything that you'd need . . ."
They were passing a stand of trees, and coming up a river that ran into a lake. It was a sparkling ribbon of blue beneath them, girded around with trees. She hovered, and Cassandra produced maps to show where grendel-sized heat sources had been spotted during earlier flybys, but they only confirmed what her father's training and Jessica's imagination were painting.
Open water equals death.
Jessica had grown quiet. The skeeter's steady hum was the only sound. They were alone up there, hovering above the grendels.
"Cassandra," she said quietly. "Shut down."
The privacy circuit, inviolate in the camp, went into effect. No one could hear them, no one could eavesdrop on them. The circuit was dead.
Jessica put the skeeter on autopilot. They were alone in the universe. She turned toward him. "We really haven't talked much since . . . that night, Justin," she said.
"Been busy. Everything happened so fast."
"But we didn't talk about how we felt. We always used to talk about that. I miss those talks."
He tried to smile, but it flickered out. "You don't need my approval. Never did."
"No. But I need you. Dad won't talk to me. Even when we tested the shelters, he barely spoke to me."