"Jerry Pournelle - Falkenberg's Legion 2 - Falkenberg's Legio" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pournelle Jerry)

new, and fit well, and obviously not reclaimed. He wore a brocaded tunic of real wool and cotton,
bright flared trousers, a new belt, and a tooled leather purse at his left hip. His clothes had cost
more than his father could afford, but they did him little good here. Still he stood straight and tall,
his lips set in defiance.
John stalked forward to keep his place in the long line. His bag, regulation space duffel
without tags, lay in front of him and he kicked it forward rather than stoop to pick it up. He
thought it would look undignified to bend over, and his dignity was all he had left.
Ahead of him was a family of five, three screaming children and their apathetic parents - or,
possibly, he thought, not parents. Citizen families were never very stable. BuRelock agents often
farmed out their quotas, and their superiors were seldom concerned about the precise identities of
those scooped up.
The disorderly crowds moved inexorably toward the end of the room. Each line terminated at
a wire cage containing a plastisteel desk. Each family group moved into a cage, the doors were
closed, and their interviews began.
The bored trustee placement officers hardly listened to their clients, and the colonists did not
know what to say to them. Most knew nothing about Earth's outsystem worlds. A few had heard
that Tanith was hot, Fulton's World cold, and Sparta a hard place to live, but free. Some
understood that Hadley had a good climate and was under the benign protection of American
Express and the Colonial Office. For those sentenced to transportation without confinement,
knowing that little could make a lot of difference to their futures; most didn't know and were
shipped off to labor-hungry mining and agricultural worlds, or the hell of Tanith, where their lot
would be hard labor, no matter what their sentences might read.
The fifteen-year-old boy - he liked to consider himself a man, but he knew many of his
emotions were boyish no matter how hard he tried to control them - had almost reached the
interview cage. He felt despair.
Once past the interview, he'd be packed into a BuRelock transportation ship. John turned again
toward the gray-uniformed guard standing casually behind the large-mesh protective screen. "I
keep trying to tell you, there's been a mistake! I shouldn't - "
"Shut up," the guard answered. He motioned threateningly with the bell-shaped muzzle of his
sonic stunner. "It's a mistake for everybody, right? Nobody belongs here. Tell the interview
officer, sonny."
John's lip curled, and he wanted to attack the guard, to make him listen. He fought to control
the rising flush of hatred. "Damn you, I - "
The guard raised the weapon. The Citizen family in front of John huddled together, shoving
forward to get away from this mad kid who could get them all tingled. John subsided and sullenly
shuffled forward in the line.
Tri-V commentators said the stunners were painless, but John wasn't eager to have it tried on
him. The Tri-V people said a lot of things. They said most colonists were volunteers, and they
said transportees were treated with dignity by the Bureau of Relocation.
No one believed them. No one believed anything the government told them. They did not
believe in the friendship among nations that had created the Co-Dominium, or in the election
figures, or -
He reached the interview cage. The trustee wore the same uniform as the guards, but his gray
coveralls had numbers stenciled across back and chest. There were wide gaps between the man's
jaggedly pointed teeth, and the teeth showed yellow stains when he smiled. He smiled often, but
there was no warmth in the expression.
"Whatcha got for me?" the trustee asked. "Boy dressed like you can afford anything he wants.
Where you want to go, boy?"
"I'm not a colonist," John insisted. His anger rose. The trustee was no more than a prisoner
himself - what right had he to speak this way? "I demand to speak with a CoDominium officer."