"Pohl, Frederik - The Sweet, Sad Queen Of The Grazing Isles" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pohl Frederick)

There are little girls with a face so fine and a look so sweet that they'll
break your heart. May was one. She was slight for her age, and all her life. Yet
even when she first toddled she would pause, and stick her thumb in her mouth,
and gaze out over the privet and the boxwood hedges at the southern seas with an
ancient mariner's look of sadness and resignation that made you forget the
rumpled hair and the dragging diaper; and when she was old enough to talk and
tie her shoes, I fell in love. It is not a thing I want to have laughed at and
so I will say no more, but it's true. I did. I loved her truly and purely, and
went on doing so. Not as a godfather.
She had a father's love for those seven years, though. She was the Commodore's
only daughter and his only legitimate child-the only child of his I saw then,
for the bastard was away at school and then at work in the Fleet's landside
offices. He was busy every minute, the Commodore, but he always found time to
see May and to play with her, and to tuck her in at night. I was less busy than
that. There was not much work attached to being the Managing Director of the May
Mackenzie Trust, for every penny of it was invested in the oaty fleet, two
ships, and then seven, and then a dozen; the money rolled in, but every spare
penny went back into building more. So I competed with Elsie Van Dorn. I became
May's other nanny. They were the best years I have ever lived. I took her with
me around the boat. We watched the dry ammonia powder being pumped out of our
belly into the hold of a tanker, kerchiefs to our noses to keep from sneezing,
and we listened to the screaming hydrogen flow as it went into the refrigeration
ships, the huge red flags warning us not to light a match or scratch a spark-as
though anyone in the Fleet were such a fool! We watched the huge slow spinning
of the low-pressure turbines as they transformed the heat into power, and we
waved good-by to the crews of the scout skimmers as they went out to seek colder
depths and warmer air to steer toward. Every member of the crew knew May, and
petted her when she would let them. They weren't truly a crew. They were more
like a city, for we had power workers and fertilizer chemists and oceanographers
and engineers and navigators and cooks and cleaning men and fire wardens and a
ship's master and five assistants to guide us and half a dozen gardeners for the
greensward and the farms on the afterdeck. There were more than eighteen hundred
human beings on board, and I think May knew the name of every one. She knew none
better than me. I was her godfather and her friend. There were a hundred other
children on board, and four who were her special friends, but there was no
person who was more special than I.
And then the Commodore one morning came to breakfast in May's room, as he always
did when he was aboard, and looked tired, admitted he'd had a bad night's sleep,
got up from the table, fell face down on his plate, and died.
I could forgive the Commodore for dying. He didn't plan to do it, and it happens
to us all. But I will never forgive him for dying with his will so written that
his bastardly bastard son, Ben, became May's guardian until she was thirty years
old.
He was aboard before the body was cold and had moved into the Commodore's rooms
before the smoke of the Commodore's cigars was aired out. The will gave him the
voting rights on May's stock. I could forbid him to sell a share. I could take
the dividends and invest them anywhere I chose-but where was there a better
investment than the oaty fleet?
I could, in fact, do nothing.
For a month, then, I looked over my shoulder every minute, expecting to see the