"Steve Perry - Matador 5 - The 97th Step" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

Mwili hesitated. There was no chance, but he might as well ask. "Could I take the
tractor? It would save three hoursтАФ"

"No. I will not slack my work so that you may ride in comfort! Meditate upon
your sins as you walk. Gain humility from prayer. Such is the Rule."

The strap was inside, out of his father's reach, and even if it had not been, Mwili
could not have brought himself to echo the religious refrain. He was leaving,
forever, and whatever he said now would be his last words to his father, whether
the man knew it or not. Instead, he said, "Good-bye, Baba." With that, he turned
and started walking away. He would miss his mother, but it would not come as a
surprise to her. She knew. She had known for some time, he was sure of that. At
night, or when his father was away, he heard it in her voice. He might have offered
to take her with him but it was her choice to remain. She could have left years ago,
and had not. She had her own destiny, and she had made her decision, based on
things she would not explain to her son. Of his leaving, she knew, and he knew
that she knew. There was no need to speak of it. Faced with her tears, he was not
certain of his resolve, so he thought to avoid them altogether.

Behind him, his father might have considered calling him back, might have
thought to chastise him, but he did not. Instead, the only sound was the whine as
the tractor's old repellors cycled back online, and blew clouds of dust into the cold
morning sky. Mwili marched away, passing the house where he'd lived his entire
life. His eyes were dry, and he felt less regret leaving his home than he had for the
loss of his ferret.

He did not look back, and thus did not see the tiny form of that ferret, scratching at
the window of Mwili's room, patiently waiting to be admitted back into his cage.

THREE

"AUTHORIZATION CODE."

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%2...0Matador%2005%20-%20The%2097th%20Step.html (16 of 313) [12/29/2004 12:32:31 AM]
 Perry, Steve - The 97th Step



The Confed operator's voice was cold, and it was not a question but an order. Give
the improper response, and you'd be in shit to the eyebrows, and fast. Do
something really stupid, like try to manually bail out, and the wheelworld's
antiship guns would fry you faster than you could blink. Coming and going was at
the Confed's order, period.

Ferret punched a button, and his com computer fed a binary number series into the
outgoing data. The numbers were legit, but the ship had no right to them. Such
counterfeits were expensive, but part of the biz, figured in on every trip. High
Confederation officials couldn't be bought easily, but the lower echelons
supplemented their pay with graft; one of the many side benefits of being one of