"Mary Rosenblum - Jumpers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

"Watching your aliens?" Silvano stepped into the glow of the monitor.

"Shit." Joaquin jumped. "Do you two get off on sneaking up on people?"

"Do you know what the penalty is for trespassing on Plantation property?" Silvano's tone was cold. "A
couple of bullets. Then you're fertilizer for the trees. You want your two weeks, you'd better practice
your sneaking, boy."

"You talked to him, didn't you?" Joaquin looked away from the blank screen, struggling with outrage and
a sense of futility. "You can always hear it in someone's voice when they've talked to Father." Fear, he
thought. The sound of fear. "You promised me two weeks!"

"You have it." Silvano's tone was surly as he sat down across from Joaquin. "I told him I'd deliver you
myself. Hell, kid, I drive a good bargain. Been doing it for years."

Greed, Joaquin thought. That was always the reason. He was a pot of gold, a cash cow, a dream of a big
house, servants, a soft life. "You're wrong," he said softly. "I'm sorry. I would have liked to have the two
weeks."

"Don't worry. We've lived in the Plantation's lap for years, and they don't even know we exist. Nobody's
going to find us after all this time. You're safe. You know, your old man didn't seem тАж very surprised to
hear from me. Or very worried." Silvano fished a plastic bottle from a sack hanging from one of the
platform supports. "What is this? Some kind of elaborate game of hide-and-seek you two play?"

"You might be right." Joaquin laughed softly. "I hadn't thought of it like that. But I think that's it exactly."
Joaquin stared at the uncooperative screen. "Maybe that's the whole issue here. Escape. Like the
jumpers. Only I'm not very good at it."

"Here." Silvano passed him the bottle.

Joaquin sniffed and wrinkled his nose. Some kind of crudely distilled alcohol. Abruptly, he tilted the
plastic bottle, tried a small swallow. Choked and coughed as the raw liquor burned his throat. Silvano
laughed and took the bottle back. Tilted it, his throat working as he swallowed. "You going to watch that
screen all night?" He wiped his mouth, replaced the bottle in the sack.

"I don't really need to sit here at all." The system would record any disturbances. He heard Silvano
rummaging around, then the soft crunch of teeth biting into fruit. "So what kind of deal did you get?" He
looked upward, hoping for the impersonal stars, but of course the canopy hid them. "A nice, fat,
untraceable cash card?"

"I got what I wanted. I'm surprised, actually." Silvano had moved into the monitor's glow again. It turned
his skin a dead gray color as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Who is your old man? A broker for
illegal neurochemistry?"

"He is one of the very few people who gently and invisibly direct the economic and political course of the
entire planet. You would be amazed at what you can do by opening a factory here, electing a mayor in
some godforsaken village there, or driving down the price of soybeans a continent away. Tip over the
right domino, and you control the world. And nobody ever knows." He shrugged, expecting disbelief,
because no one believed anything that wasn't in the media six times a day.