"Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 14 - Assignment Hellhole" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

seriously argued that it should be any other way. Right now Alanni Keor didn't
feel like an aristocrat. She felt hot and still thirsty, not to mention unsure
as to how long to leave the sluicegates open. The weather people reading the
satellites said the gahmsin wind was ten days away. Alanni was a greaseroot
farmer's daughter who had no link to weathersats but who read the sky and the
feel of the breeze on her skin. They told her the gahmsin was overdue, and a
couple of sems too little water might bake the paddy dry. She looked up at the
bronze-tinted blue sky, shading her eyes against Posidonios's glare. That's
when the tractor radio said wheee-eep! The signal sounded so much like
Bouncy's vocal call that Alanni half expected to see it rising out of the
ground or floating down from the sky. The Jarp had been a domestic servant
when it was a slave, and learned to move so silently that its mistress usually
forgot it was there. (That was how Bouncy had gained its freedom, too. Bouncy
heard something to connect its lady-mistress with bribes to greaseroot
inspectors. That something got to Lieutenant Alanni Keor, Tri-System Police.
She agreed to leave the lady's name out of the indictment-in return for her
freeing Bouncy.) (Alanni didn't like slavery or slavers very much.) The sound
was only the radio this time. Her other junior partner was
calling. (Jaykennador Eks of Outreach was a retired computer-software thief.
Captain Alanni Keor, T-SP, had left his name out of another indictment. Her
thinking was that with one more chance he might get up the courage to go
straight. So far she'd been proven right.) " 'Lanni. Jay here. Tilno just
called. Says he has a message for you." "Message? Who from?" "He didn't
say." "Tell him to get on the tractor's frequency. It's-" "I already did. He
says the message is confidential." 4 "Sweet of him. Did he say anything
useful, Jay?" "Pos. He's on his way over here." "Is he! Well, give him a
parking space and a drink, and tell him he's going to have to wait. If he
takes that Hummingbird onto the dikes again, I swear I'll run the tractor over
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it!" Jaykennador laughed. He must remember as well as Alanni the damage
Tilno's elegant little car had done to the dike's top the last time he'd
wanted ,to see her. "Pos, 'Lanni. Anything else?" "Sit on any more calls," she
said sourly. "I don't care if it's a proposition from the First Councillor of
the TSA. I'm not home and you don't know when I will be." "Will do. End
transmission." "Uh." Alanni flexed tight shoulder muscles. If Tilno had
something so confidential he wouldn't transmit it, it was either another
proposal of marriage or something she didn't want to try imagining right now.
Not with a greaseroot paddy holding a third of the year's income in need of
water. She looked at the sky again. Squinting, she made out a peach-colored
haze on the southern horizon. Too light for what her father's generation
called the Gahmsin's Scouts, but still ... Thirty sems of water should do it,
she decided. A person could sometimes add more if she had to. With too much,
the greaseroot was done and so was she. She sighted on the marker pole, made a
couple of gestures of aversion (which was as close to praying as she came),
and punched the Transmit key. Twenty minutes later Alanni's father would have
been proud of her. She was even pretty proud of herself. She was just backing
the seeder into the garage when Jay stuck his head out the window of the farm