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

rumpled uniform, taking painstaking aim with a recoilless pistol. Brown eyes
stared intently over the sights, seeming to look right at Defoe. She squeezed
off shot after shot as death stormed toward her.

The recorder jerked upward. Swaying grass tops framed empty blue sky. A superbly
ugly Tuch-Dah appeared, swinging a hideous curved club. The transmission ceased,
replaced by braided hangings and a case of bone china.

Defoe turned to lady Ellenor, saying, "That was fairly ghastly." Shutting her
eyes, she gripped her wicker seat with white knuckles, letting out a short sharp
gasp. He had thought Ellenor Battle would be fairly shockproof, especially on a
second viewing -- but without any warning, her feelings were showing. The woman
was full of surprises.

Helio was in the lounge. Any flying he had done had not taken him away from the
table. Breakfast had disappeared, but his glass still held champagne. Broken
highlands had replaced the Camelback Steppe. Defoe's navmatrix knew the country;
beyond these mesas lay the Sleeping Steppe. Then the Azur.

"Enjoy the show?" Helio's eyes were still hidden by blue shades, so it was hard
to tell how he meant it.

Defoe nodded. A full-blown Tuch-Dah massacre. No wonder everyone from the Port
Master on down was potted and praying. There were a thousand or so bona fide
Homo sapiens on Glory. Plus maybe twice as many on Spindle who weren't much
inclined to come down. Willungha could field 20,000 club-wielding Tuch-Dah, if
he cared to. There were ten million Thals spread over the planet.

Helio twirled the stem of his champagne glass. "Glory might have been a new Eden
for ambitious youngsters from the Home Systems -- but the task of terraforming
was too real for them." Helio did not have to say that he had come here, giving
up the easy life to raise bison and horses, risking his neck with archaic
technology, making the planet not merely habitable but semi-inviting.

He dearly relished the irony of how hard it was to get people just to come down
from Spindle. Yet the habitat was built as an interstellar slowboat, launched
ages ago to seed the Delta Eridani system. A home for humans while Glory was
being terraformed. But by the time Glory had a biosphere and a semi-breathable
atmosphere, the insystem humans had become perfectly adapted -- to life on
Spindle.

So AID had to go for Thals. Retrobred Neanderthals were shipped direct to Glory,
to do the drudge work, overseeing SuperChimps, leveling landing strips, digging
canals, tending great herds of herbivores. And the brutes had done a sterling
job. Hell, they were still doing it. While backward types -- like the Tuch-Dahs
-- bred like lemmings out on the vast steppes.

Defoe glanced over at Ellenor Battle. AID had planned this fiasco, from the
first slowboats to the retrobreeding program that produced not just the
Neanderthals, but a ready-made Cenozoic ecology as well.