"Niven, Larry - Rammer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

He had drifted off wondering about the future, wondering what he would wake to. A vault into the unknown. World government? Interplanetary spacecraft? Glean fusion power? Strange clothing, body paints, nudism?

Or crowding, poverty, all the fuels used up, power provided by cheap labor? He had thought of those, but it was all right. They would not be able to afford to wake him if they were that poor. The world he dreamed of in those last moments was a rich world, able to support such luxuries as Jerome Corbett.

It looked as if he weren't going to see too damn much of it.

A guard led Corbett away after the testing. He walked with a meaty hand wrapped around Corbett's thin upper arm. Leg irons would have been no more effective had Corbett thought of escaping. The guard took him up a narrow plastic staircase to the roof.

The noon sun blazed in a blue sky that shaded to yellow, then brown at the horizon. Green plants grew in close-packed rows on parts of the roof. Elsewhere many sheets of something glassy were exposed to the sunlight.

Corbett caught one glimpse of the world from a bridge between two roofs. It was a cityscape of close-packed buildings, all of the same cold cubistic design.

And Corbett was impossibly high on a narrow strip of concrete with no guardmils at all. He froze. He stopped breathing.

The guard did not speak. He tugged at Corbett's arm, not hard, and watched to see what he would do. Corbett pulled himself together and went on.

The room was all bunks: two walls of bunks with a gap between. The light was cool and artificial, but outside it was nearly noon. Could they be expecting him to sleep?

The room was big, a thousand bunks big. Most of the bunks were full. A few occupants watched incuriously as the guard showed Corbett which bunk was his. It was the bottom-most in a stack of six. Corbett had to drop to his knees and roll to get into it. The bedclothes were strange; silky and very smooth, even slippery-the only touch of luxury in that place. But there was no top sheet, nothing to cover him. He lay on his side, looking out at the dormitory from near floor level.

Three things were shocking about that place.

One was the smell. Apparently perfumes and deodorants had been another passing fad. Pierce had been overdue for a bath. So was Corbett's new self. Here the smell was rich.

The second was the double bunks, four of them in a vertical stack, wider than the singles and with thicker mattresses. The doubles were for loving, not sleeping. What shocked Corbett was that they were right out in the open, not hidden by so much as a gauze curtain.

The same was true of the toilets.

How can they live like this?

Corbett rubbed his nose and jumped-and cursed at himself for jumping. It was the third time he had done that. His own nose had been big and fleshy and somewhat shapeless. But the nose he now rubbed automatically when trying to think was small and narrow with a straight, sharp edge. He might very well get used to the smell and everything else before he got used to his own nose.

Some time after dusk a man came for him. A broad, brawny type wearing a gray jumper and a broad expressionless face, the guard was not one to waste words. He found Corbett's bunk, pulled Corbett out by one arm and led him stumbling away. Corbett was facing Pierce before he was fully awake.

In annoyance he asked, "Doesn't anyone else speak English?"

"No," said the checker.

Pierce and the guard guided Corbett to a comfortable armchair facing a wide curved screen. They put padded earphones on him. They set a plastic bottle of clear fluid on a shelf over his head. Corbett noticed a clear plastic tube tipped with a hypodermic needle.

"Breakfast?"

Pierce missed the sarcasm. "You'll have one meal each day-after learning period and exercise." He inserted the hypodermic into a vein in Corbett's arm. He covered the wound with a blob of what might have been silly putty.

Corbett watched it all without emotion. If he had ever been afraid of needles the months of pain and cancer had worked it out of him. A needle was surcease, freedom from pain for a time.

"Learn now," said Pierce. "This knob controls speed. The volume is set for your hearing. You may replay any section once. Don't worry about your arm-you can't pull the tube loose."

"There's something I wanted to ask you, only I couldn't remember the word. What's a rammer?"