"R. Garcia Y Robertson - Oxygen Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robertson R Garcia Y)

Led into an inner bedroom with the same white-on-white motif, Derek was confronted by a middle-aged
matriarch wearing a blue sheath dress beneath a black bouffant hairdo. Studying them from under her
heavy eye shadow, the woman introduced herself as Ginger, asking suspiciously, "Which side are you
on?"

"Neither," Derek announced hopefully.

Women around him smiled wide, and voiced a happy, "Hallelujah!"

"Praise the King. We have been waiting for someone to come to their senses," Ginger explained. "When
we saw her we were afraid you might be Humanists."

"Funny, I thought you would be Humanists," Derek admitted.

"Hell, no! Elvis didn't believe in race war. His only begotten daughter married Saint Michael, who
bleached his own skin, showing it was no shame to be any colorтАФeven white."

Women around Derek chimed in with another chorus of, "Praise the King."

Derek turned to Tammy. "What are they saying?"

Tammy shook her head. "Too hard to explain. But these people gave Pender no help at all. They are way
too wrapped up in their religion to worry about the Gekkos, or anything else." '

Derek believed it, but the Greenies wanted the whole central massif evacuated and combed for weapons.
Nor did Derek blame them, since orbital surveys indicated a tunnel complex that could hold enough
warheads to blow a hole in the thin atmosphere and scatter radioactive debris all over the planet.
Greenies were courteous, but not crazy.

Of course, the Presleites did not see it that way. "We have done nothing," Ginger complained. "We can't
just give up our homes to Greenies."

"You can't stop them," Derek pointed out. Greenies were going to get what they wanted, even if Leo had
to dig the humans out of their tunnels.

"Really?" Batting black lashes, Ginger smiled to her companions, who drew plastic stingers out of their
print dresses. Negotiations had taken an alarming turn for the worse, and Ginger primly informed him,
"Hating war doesn't make us pushovers."

Apparently not. Staring into the round black muzzles of the stingers, Derek was quick to point out that
shooting him would do no one any good.

"Shoot you?" Ginger acted like the thought had never entered her head. "You have earned an audience
with the King. These stingers are just to show we are serious. Some people think polite tolerance is a
sign of weakness." Ginger nodded at Tammy, to show who she meant.

Tammy merely shrugged, taking no responsibility for Presleite opinions. Just when Derek thought things
could not get any stranger, a holo flickered into being in front of him, a handsome dark-haired young
man, wearing a sparkling white and gold suit, with a wide belt and a huge golden buckle. He had lively