"Tom Purdom - Sepoy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

Sepoy

Tom Purdom
 A DF Books NERDs Release

Copyright (C)1992 Tom Purdom

First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, December 1992
There had been a time, near the end of the twentieth century, when very few people would have believed
anything like the Tucfra Hegemony would ever be necessary. Then the global temperature had risen
almost 50 percent faster than those unpleasant forecaster types had said it might, the tides had washed
away beaches from the Riviera to the Great Barrier Reef, Londoners had discovered they couldn't get
through an English May without an air conditioner, and it had seemed a little matter like the exact amount
of fumes and radiation each city or province could dump into the atmosphere might be a causede guerre
after all. When the tucfra ship had orbited Earth in 2044, three small wars had already gone nuclear, the
United States was lurching toward its second devolution, the Austro-Hungarian Economic Bloc was
exchanging threatening faxes with the Russo-Turkish Defense Pact, and humanity had only been saved
from a global plague, brought on by an attempt to use biological weapons, by a notably ruthless decision
by the last prime minister of the Republic of India.

Intellectually, Jason Jardanel was willing to admitтАФin the privacy of his own thoughts, anywayтАФthat the
Hegemony had probably kept his fellow humans from wiping out every vestige of organized society on
their planet. When he was confronted with the kind of suggestion he had just heard, however, he reacted
like every upright, thoroughly conventional citizen of the New England Confederation was supposed to
react.

тАЬI'm a human,тАЭ Jason told the woman lying beside him. тАЬI'm not a tucfra. I'm not a seep. I'm a human.тАЭ

The words hadn't come out that way, of course. She had caught Jason by surprise, while he had been
languidly contemplating the ceiling of his bedroom, and he could still become almost unintelligible when a
surge of emotion went racing through his psyche and he forgot to shape each syllable with extreme care.
In the sentences Marcia Woodbine had actually heard, тАЬhumanтАЭ had sounded more likehammen ,
тАЬtucfraтАЭ liketafre , тАЬnot a seepтАЭ likenaughtahhsip . Earlier Marcia had lifted Jason out of his wheelchair.
Later she would cradle his skinny, flabby body in her arms and lift him out of bed.

He had thought she was just another one of those women who improved their opinions of themselves by
dispensing sexual charity. They seemed to come along every year or two and he never turned them down
if they were reasonably presentable. There had even been one or two he had liked.

тАЬThey thought you would feel that way,тАЭ Marcia Woodbine said. тАЬThey told me I could tell you this was
an offer that should stay open for some time. Your records apparently indicate you've got just the kind of
intelligence they need the mostтАФthe ability to think very fast when you're confronted with practical
problems.тАЭ

Jason stared at the ceiling. Twenty minutes ago, when he had opened his eyes between gasps, he had
seen her, astride, towering above him, her breasts swinging from side to side, her face, with the close cut
black hair, looking like it belonged on a Greek vase. There had been a young violinist in a North Pacific
chamber orchestra, five years ago, who had looked like that. Jason had played a video of the chamber
version of Sallinen'sShadows eight times just so he could look at her. He had never quite admitted to
himself, at the time, that he had played it for that reason, but he had.