"John C. Wright - Guest Law" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wright John C)

GUEST LAW
by John C. Wright
____________________________
Copyright ┬й 1997 by John C. Wright
Reprinted in Year's Best SF 3
HarperPrism
ISBN 0-06-105901-3

eBook scanned & proofed by binwiped 11-10-02 [v1.0]




The night of deep space is endless and empty and dark. There is nothing behind which to hide. But ships
can be silent, if they are slow.
The noble ship Procrustes was silent as a ghost. She was black-hulled, and ran without beacons or
lights. She was made of anti-radar alloys and smooth ceramics, shark-finned with panels meant to diffuse
waste-heat slowly, and tiger-striped with electronic webs meant to guide certain frequen-cies around the
hull without rebounding.
If she ever were seen, a glance would show that she was meant to be slow. Her drive was fitted
with baffle upon baf-fle, cooling the exhaust before it was expelled, a dark drive, non-radioactive, silent
as sprayed mist. Low energy in the drive implied low thrust. Further, she had no centrifuge sec-tion, nor
did she spin. This meant that her crew were lightweights, their blood and bones degenerated or adapted
to microgravity, not the sort who could tolerate high boosts.
This did not mean Procrustes was not a noble ship. Warships can be slow; only their missiles need
speed.
And so it was silently, slowly, that Procrustes ap-proached the stranger's cold vessel.


"We are gathered, my gentlemen, to debate whether this new ship here viewed is noble, or whether she is
unarmed; and, if so, whether and how the guest law applies. It pleases us to hear you employ the second
level of speech; for this is a semi-informal occasion, and briefer honorifics we permit."
The captain, as beautiful and terrifying as something from a children's Earth-story, floated nude
before the viewing well. The bridge was a cylinder of gloom, with only control-lights winking like
constellations, the viewing well shining like a full moon.
The captain made a gesture with her fan toward Smith and spoke: "Engineer, you do filth-work . . ."
(by which she meant manual labor) "... which makes you familiar with machines." (She used the term
"familiar" because it simply was not done to say a lowlife had "knowledge" or "exper-tise.") "It would
amuse us to hear your conclusions touching and concerning the stranger's ship."
Smith was never allowed high and fore to the bridge, except when he was compelled to go, as he
was now. His hands had been turned off at the wrists, since lowlifes should not touch controls.
Smith was in terror of the captain, but loved her too, since she was the only highlife who called
smiths by their old title. The captain was always polite, even to tinkers or drifters or bondsman.
She had not even seemed to notice when Smith had hooked one elbow around one of the many
guy-wires that webbed the dark long cylinder of the bridge. Some of the offi-cers and knights who
floated near the captain had turned away or snorted with disgust when he had clasped that rope. It was a
foot-rope, meant for toes, not a hand rope. But Smith's toes were not well formed, not coordinated. He
had not been born a lightweight.
Smith was as drab as a hairless monkey next to the cap-tain's vavasors and carls, splendid in their
head-to-toe tattoos which displayed heraldries and victory-emblems. These nobles all kept their heads