"Tuning, William - Terro-Human - Fuzzy 04 - Fuzzy Bones 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tuning William)

During the trip, Helton began to suspect The Rev was right; Christiana didn't likely know much more about the oldest profession than one might learn in a steamy romance novel. But there was a big boom happening on Zarathustra, with fortunes to be made by all sorts of means; if Christiana said she was going there to clean up on the influx of population generated by the Pendarvis Decisions, Helton was willing to go along with it.

It made little difference to him, anyway. He was just as glad to be by himself as around others. He was used to operating alone. There were very few Master Gunnery Sergeants of Fleet Marines, so it was not the usual thing for him to settle in with his peer group at cocktail hour and talk shop. Maybe once every year or two he would run into another Master Gunnie. Mostly he just did his job, auditing weapons systems, gunnery performance, and readiness levels. Most often he traveled by civilian transportation to avoid excessively widespread knowledge of his destination and wasn't much obliged to answer to anyone below the rank of Fleet Admiral or Force-General.

"Is our fellow passenger about, this morning?" Christiana asked.

"I didn't see him at breakfast," Helton replied, "but then I never see him at breakfast." He looked at the readout on the wall. "Nearly ten hundred, galactic standard, though. The bar will open in a few minutes and that should fetch him out."

I rarely see you at breakfast, either, he thought, but I suppose you're in the habit of sleeping late in the morning.

Chapter 3

At the first rattle of ice into the bin as the barman began to open up, the third passenger appeared in the companionway as though answering a mysterious call to nature. He was sporting a Zarathustran sunstone in the neckcloth below his clerical collar. At the start of the trip he had introduced himself-rather grandiloquently-as "The Right Reverend Father Thomas Aquinas Gordon," but allowed as how he would answer just as readily to "Rev," "Tom," "Father G,"or "Thursday."

"Thursday?" Christiana had said, falling for it.

"I certainly am!" The Rev boomed. "Let's have a drink!"

"Good morning, children," The Rev said, without breaking stride as he headed for his favorite barstool. He clapped his hands together and rubbed the palms against each other vigorously. "Sustenance, Harry," he said to the barman, "sustenance."

Phil Helton was a bit youngish-early forties-to be a Master Gunnery Sergeant, but he didn't think of himself as "children" in any sense of the word. To The Rev, though, maybe I am, he thought. But, then, when he talks about "gathering his flock" on Zarathustra, I don't reckon he means herding sheep, either.

The Rev himself was some indeterminate age which could fall anywhere between thirty and sixty, even allowing for a good deal of hyperspace travel. His hair was gray at the temples, but thick and healthy. He was a little on the fat side, but had the fast, light-footed movements of a young man. There were wrinkles around his eyes but the eyes themselves were an alert and piercing dark blue.

He took a respectful swig of his first drink and shuddered violently for several seconds. "Ahhhhhhhh," he said. "Like blood to a vampire."

While The Rev swapped pleasantries with the barman- and gambled him out of the next two drinks playing Double-O-Helton and Christiana drifted around the rim of the lounge toward the bar, drinking in the different views in the observation screens.

Helton had been on Zarathustra before, but not recently, so his replies to Christiana's barrage of questions about the planet were less than informative. Everything would be changed by the current land rush, in any case.

The two of them had drifted over to The Rev's roost at the bar.

"Only a couple more hours," Helton said, nodding toward the image of the Zarathustran moon. "Then the last leg down to Mallorysport for you and the shuttle to Xerxes for me. What's the name of the place where you'll be setting up your mission, Rev? I may get down and see you."

The Rev shrugged. "I don't know what it's called or where it is. But I know Mallorysport is the largest city on the planet-seventy-five thousand or so. Might be double or triple that by now, with all this immigration. So there's bound to be a slum section for me to work in-some place that's crying for a soup kitchen and medical mission."

"A slum?" Christiana said. "Already? Zarathustra's only been settled for a little more than twenty-five years."

"Oh, it's there, all right," The Rev said, tapping his index finger alongside his nose as though he could smell the place already. "Wherever Terrans go, vice and squalor are in hot pursuit and soon pitch camp with the rest of the pilgrims."

Chapter 4

He was right, of course. The slum of Mallorysport had the name Junktown and in it teemed the throngs of the unwashed and the unfortunate-losers, thieves, gamblers, cut-throats, prostitutes, dope-runners, racketeers, hoodlums, the impoverished, and the eternally down-on-their-luck.

Though there were only the three in the first-class lounge, the economy-class decks of the City of Asgard were crammed with a fresh crop of immigrants to be deposited in Mallorysport. As soon as the word of the Pendarvis Decisions reached Terra, colonists had stampeded toward Zarathustra. A Class-IV, inhabited, planet. No more Company monopoly. Free land. A chance to make your fortune. A chance to get away from Terra-where no one ever had enough room.

When they discovered that it might take longer than a couple of standard galactic days to become deliriously rich, their grubstakes would start running out.

The people who scraped together every sol they could lay hands on to migrate to a colony world weren't just worthless bums, though; they all had skills, knowledge, and abilities that were needed. The Chartered Zarathustra Company had carved out the modern city of Mallorysport with such people and with the intelligent management of their talents.