"Niven, Larry - Madness Has Its Place" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

"Early twenty-second. And there was a field projector that would make things burn, late twenty-third."

"I'll find 'em." Anton's eyes took on a faraway look. "There's the archives. I don't mean just the stuff that was built and then destroyed. The archives reach all the way back to the early twentieth. Stuff that was proposed: tanks, orbital beam weapons, kinetic energy weapons, biologicals - "

"We don't want biologicals."

I thought he hadn't heard. "Picture crowbars six feet long. A short burn takes them out of orbit, and they steer themselves down to anything with the silhouette you want... a tank or a submarine or a limousine, say. Primitive stuff now, but at least it would do something." He was really getting into this. The technical terms he was tossing off were masks for horror. He stopped suddenly, then said, "Why not biologicals?"

"Nasty bacteria tailored for us might not work on warcats. We want their biological weapons, and we don't want them to have ours.

"Stet. Now, here's one for you. How would you adjust a 'doc to snake a normal person into a soldier?"

My head snapped up. I saw the guilt spread across his face. He said, "I had to look up your dossier. Had to, Jack."

"Sure. All right, I'll see what I can find." I stood up. "The easiest way is to pick schitzies and train them as soldiers. We'd start with the same citizens the ARM has been training since... date classified, three hundred years or so. People who need the 'doc to keep their metabolism straight or they'll ram a car into a crowd or strangle - "

"We wouldn't find enough. When you need soldiers, you need thousands. Maybe millions."

"True. It's a rare condition. Well, good night, Anton."

I fell asleep on the 'doc table again.

Dawn poked under my eyelids, and I got up and moved toward the holophone. Caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. Rethought. If David saw me looking like this, he'd be booking tickets to attend the funeral. So I took a shower and a cup of coffee first.

My eldest son looked like I had: decidedly rumpled. "Dad, can't you read a clock?"

"I'm sorry. Really." These calls are so expensive that there's no point hanging up. "How are things in Aristarchus?"

"Clavius. We've been moved out. We've got half the space we used to, and we'd need twice the space to hold everything we own. Ah, the time change isn't your fault, Dad; we're all in Clavius now, all but Jennifer. She -" David vanished. A mechanically soothing voice said, "You have impinged on ARM police business. The cost of your call will be refunded."

I looked at the empty space where David's face had been. I was ARM... but maybe I'd already heard enough.

My granddaughter Jennifer is a medic. The censor program had reacted to her name in connection with David. David said she wasn't with him. The whole family had been moved out except for Jennifer.

If she'd stayed on in Aristarchus or been kept on...

Human medics are needed when something unusual has happened to a human body or brain. Then they study what's going on, with an eye to writing more programs for the 'docs. The bulk of those problems are psychological.

Anton's "peace games" must be stressful as hell.

II Anton wasn't at the Monobloc Thursday. That gave me another week to rethink and recheck the programs I'd put on a dime disk, but I didn't need it.

I came back the next Thursday. Anton Brillov and Phoebe Garrison were holding a table for four.

I paused - backlit in the doorway, knowing my expression was hidden - then moved in. "When did you get back?"

"Saturday before last," Phoebe said gravely.

It felt awkward. Anton felt it, too, but then, he would. I began to wish I didn't ever have to see him on a Thursday night.