"C. J. Ryan - Gloria VanDeen 3 - The Fifth Quadrant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ryan C.J)

light-years in diameter and was home to some 3 trillion sentient beings. The fact that she was
the former wife of the man who was now Emperor Charles V was of some importance, as was
her position as head of the Office of Strategic InterventionтАФthe newest action arm of the
Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, the sprawling bureaucracy that administered the Terran
Empire. Alone, either one of those facts would have made her a woman of some consequence;
together, they made her a potent force. But it was her beauty, brilliance, and courage that had
won the hearts of the masses and made her, as was often said, the Sweetheart of the Empire.

At moments like this, Gloria was outrageously happy to be exactly who and what she was.
She had just brought her mission on Cartago to a triumphant conclusion. And for a change,
the intervention had been brief, bloodless, and relatively simple.

Cartago was a thirsty world, where a small population of some 5 million lived on the
margins of a globe-girdling desert. Just 194 light-years from Earth, the planet had been settled
some eight hundred years earlier in pre-Imperial days. In later years, it probably never would
have been colonized at all, but in that first era of interstellar expansion, Earthmen were not
very particular in their choice of new worlds. If a planet had oxygen in its atmosphere and a
mean surface temperature somewhere between the freezing and boiling points of water, it was
a candidate for settlement. Cartago qualified, if only just.

Over the centuries, the slowly growing population had splintered into what amounted to
tribal groups, although the ethnic, cultural, and religious orientations of the three main tribes
differed little. The only differences of real consequence concerned water and access to it. The
Mountain Tribe controlled the flow of the precious liquid that trickled down to the dusty
plains and the lands of the Eastern and Western Tribes. Accordingly, the Mountain Tribe had
always selected the Praetor who headed the planetary government, such as it was. The coming
of the Empire had remarkably little impact on Cartago, and generations of Imperial Governors
and Dexta bureaucrats were content to let the natives work things out for themselves.

In recent years, however, the elders of the Eastern and Western Tribes hadтАФfor Spirit knew
what bizarre reasonsтАФtaken to sending their brightest sons and daughters back to Earth to be
educated in the law. Having nothing better to do when they returned to their homeworld, the
young barristers began suing the other tribes over the only thing that mattered on their
worldтАФwater. Thus, there had been angry protests, boycotts, insults, threats, and finally, the
sequestration of water that had once flowed freely from the slopes of the central mountains.
The Imperial Governor had been unable to persuade anyone to see the light of reason, and the
tiny Dexta establishment on the planet had thrown up its arms in despair.

So Norman Mingus had sent Gloria to Cartago.

A year and a half earlier, before the creation of the OSI, GloriaтАФthen a Level XIII Dexta
bureaucratтАФhad used her wit and wiles to attract a thousand volunteers on the planet Pecos to
help her avert a genocide on the backwater world of Mynjhino. Dexta Secretary Norman
Mingus, taking note of her success, had recognized the extraordinary power she possessed and
sought to employ it on a regular basis by appointing her to lead the new Office of Strategic
Intervention. He had planned to use Gloria as his chessboard queen, dispatching her hither and
yon throughout the Empire to hot spots where the existing bureaucratic machinery was failing
to respond adequately to the challenges of the moment. In the year since the formation of the
OSI, Gloria had only burnished her already gleaming reputation as the sexiest and most
desirable woman in the EmpireтАФand, in the process, had achieved some remarkable results for