"Jerry Oltion - Artifacts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oltion Jerry)

an amphitheater. It was in a section of the spaghetti tube designed to rotate for gravity; it wasn't rotating
now, but there were benches arranged in semicircular rows. Brian wondered why the aliens hadn't put
the amphitheater in a zero-gee section where everybody could get a good view, but he figured whatever
they watched here must have required gravity. It hadn't taken long, apparently; the benches looked
uncomfortable. They were set farther apart than human design would make them, too, independent
corroboration that these aliens had been bigger than humans. There was a dais down at the bottom with
what looked like a stubby podium in the middle of it, but when he floated closer he saw it was a bed of
some sort. It was designed for a ten foot winged monster to lie down on--on its back.
Odd, he thought. Their limbs came out from the sides and bent downward like gila monsters', and their
wings folded up behind them; they would have been almost helpless on their backs.
Then he noticed the gutters around the edge of the dais. For bathing? But he saw no water source.
And the gutters didn't empty into a drain, but only into a basin. So whatever the fluid involved, there
mustn't have been much of it.
Blood? The thought came unbidden, and suddenly with the clarity of a hallucination Brian saw a
person strapped there, struggling as he plunged a knife into their chest. He flinched back, disgusted with
himself, not just for the image but his reaction to it. For a second there he'd been excited.
He shook his head as if he could dislodge the image, and pulled himself closer to the table again.
Trying to be charitable, he thought perhaps it was an operating theater for training medical students. A
little examination revealed a shelf below the bed on the back side of the dais, where someone facing the
audience could easily reach it, and floating behind a net to keep it in place he found a stone knife. Double
edged. Quite sharp. But not delicate enough for surgery.
They were hundreds of millions of miles from the nearest rock. There were much better materials to
make a knife from anyway. Brian could only think of one reason to use a stone knife on a helpless
subject in front of an audience, and he didn't like it.
Nor did he like the hundreds of headsets in a rack behind the altar. He gingerly removed one, avoiding
the thumb-switch, and examined it closely. There was no way to tell what was stored inside, but he could
guess. Either the memories of the victim or the memories of the congregation, and either one made his
skin crawl.
Now that he held the device in his hand he saw a tiny amber light glowing from its apex. The power
gauge read fully charged.
He flung it away with all his strength. It smashed against the wall above the farthest row of seats.
Pieces of plastic, or whatever it was made of, sprayed outward and tumbled back into the room.
He snatched another one to send after the first, but he stopped with it still in his hand. How could it
have power?
He looked at the others. The first twelve were lit. Counting the one he smashed, and the one Julie
surprised him with, there was one for every person on board before this last supply ship arrived, but only
if they had been activated after the missing scientist, Anton, disappeared.
Or maybe while he disappeared. Considering the flashback Brian had just experienced, that seemed
pretty likely. He must have gotten that image through Julie's headset along with the memory of flying.
What else had she planted in his brain?
***


He heard a noise from outside, and immediately jumped for the ceiling. Nobody thought to look up
when they entered a room, especially if they were busy. The amphitheater was in zero gee, but it had
been designed to be used in gravity, so maybe the subjective impressions would keep people aligned
along the floor. Brian wished he was armed in case they didn't, but he hadn't been expecting this kind of
situation when he went for his walk.
 The scientists entered the sacrifice chamber, Julie in the lead. The others held Sharrol and Dave. Brian
saw no sign at first of Marlene or Pierre, but then he realized why: he was looking for them among the