"Tilley, Patrick - The Amtrack Wars 02 - First Family" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tilley Patrick)

applied for retraining as a VidComm Tech (OG) and had gotten himself
posted to the Tracker way-station at Pueblo. His eagerness to get back
to where the action was had been warmly commended by his superiors and
had earned him ten plus points at the next quarterly assessment. This,
in turn, had resulted in a welcome boost to his credit rating. The
added privileges that came with an upgraded ID-card could always be put
to good use but the real pleasure came from the knowledge that he had
beaten the system. Had the Assessors known the real reason behind
Deke's wish to return overground they would, without doubt, have been a
great deal less generous.

Deke was a covert cloud-freak. He had become addicted on his first
trip aboard the Rio Bravo and, since reaching Pueblo, had been using
the facilities in the watch-tower to secretly record the more
spectacular sunrises and sunsets on videotape. He had, of course, only
been able to do this when he was alone. Though most Trackers might
have considered it a distinctly bizarre way of passing the time,
looking at clouds did not, in itself, contravene any of the statutory
codes of behaviour laid down by the First Family; on the other hand,
making unauthorised video recordings certainly did.

Deke was not quite sure whether it was a Code Two or Code Three offence
but, either way, getting caught could be bad news, especially if - as
in this case - the videotape included a sound-track featuring a
proscribed form of music known as 'blackjack'. Hence the need for a
secure place in which to stash the tape - not an easy thing to find in
a Tracker way-station or indeed anywhere else, for there were few doors
and even fewer of them could be locked. In the Federation, the
emphasis was on group identity, group activity and shared facilities;
privacy, in the normally accepted sense of the word, was deemed to be
unnecessary; personal possessions were regarded as unimportant.

Deke was different to the majority of Trackers at Pueblo who lived,
ate, fought, slept and screwed around in small, close-knit groups and
looked forward eagerly to the next overground sweep, or an incursion by
hostiles.

They needed that extra shot of adrenalin generated by combat to feel
fully alive. Deke had gotten the same buzz during his time on the
wagon-trains but his real kicks came from gazing upon sun-tinted towers
of cumulus, the dark menacing bulk of thunderheads, the delicate
tracery of alto-cirrus, teased out by the wind like the tails of horses
- one of the many extinct animal species. His four-hour solo stint in
the watch-tower had become very precious to him. He liked the
solitude, the privacy - even though neither word-concept was included
in the official Tracker vocabulary. The videotape, with its illegal
sound-track, was his alone; his most precious possession. The last
thing Deke wanted to see while on duty was a bunch of screaming
lumpheads.