"Robertson, R Garcia - Gone To Glory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robertson R Garcia Y)

Kids flashed past on the slidewalk, tanned young bodies in overdrive. Defoe
passed feelie spas and low-g saunas. Happy holos invited him in. No more. Not
now. Sorry guys. Got to sober up and go to work.

Temptation abounded. And it was all free, from gaming orgies to organic feasts.
Free as air to anyone who set foot on Spindle. Like an ancient Greek polls,
Spindle made its own laws -- but without the polis' slavery and infanticide --
computers and birth lotteries took their place. No money. No credit. No theft,
graft or taxes. And like the ancient polls Spindle had only two punishments that
mattered. Death and exile. Now Defoe had to face both of these fates, for
nothing except the right to return. Hardly fair, but the system lacked honest
work.

At Port Orifice -- the cavernous lock that let ships enter and exit --he drew
emergency rations, heat caps, a thermal parka, bedroll, camp knife, folding
mattock, climbing rope, canteen and medikit. Telling the medikit to sober him
up, he ticketed himself for the surface.

A call came through with his clearance. Salome's assistant, a pretty little
catamite with painted lids and pierced nipples, purred into the comlink. "Hey
big boy. Is it true the Tuch-Dahs are cannibals?"

"No such luck." Defoe doubted Salome's kept boy had ever seen the surface. "They
only eat people." Given conditions on Glory, Defoe thought cannibalism should at
least be legal. Maybe even mandatory. If people were like hyenas, compelled to
eat everything they killed, dirtside would be a safer place.

Salome's pet laughed wickedly. "Old Battle-ax wants to talk with you."

"Who?" The lock door dilated, cheerily welcoming Defoe aboard.

"Ellenor Battle. Boss dragon lady at AID."

Defoe stepped through the lock into the shuttle. "Tell 'em I've gone to Glory."

The oxy-hydrogen shuttle lacked g-fields and cabin service; inflight
entertainment was a pair of tiny portholes. Defoe felt the backward jolt of
retros. Spindle seemed to leap ahead; the sole fleck of civilization in this
very Outback system dwindled rapidly.

He had his navmatrix tap into the shuttle's moronic guidance system. Nerve
endings merged with avionics -- sensors, astrogation, and stabilization became
extensions of sight, sound, and kinesthetics. A modest thrill. Pretty dry
compared to real piloting. Defoe's previous employer had been an over-privileged
idiot who wracked up a Fornax Skylark, stranding Defoe insystem. Delta Eridani
was a dead end, producing nothing the wider universe needed. Traffic was all
incoming. Subsidized AID shipments came in cosmic packing crates --
robofreighters cannibalized at their destination.

Only a knack for steering through trouble (and putting up with Thals) earned