"Robert F. Young - L'Arc de Jeanne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

insects. He waited till after the metamorphosis took place; then he found a secluded bower and settled
down for the night, praying that his presence on board the Ambassadress would go unremembered for at
least another sixteen hours.
He did not try to sleep, but sat in stony silence, wondering why it had taken him so long to see
O'Riordan for what he really was. D'Arcy's myopia was inexcusable, for he had read history, and history
was full of O'Riordans. Some of them had worn deerskins and some of them had worn tunics and some
of them had worn oriental raiment and some of them had worn uniforms and some of them had worn hair
shirts and some of them had worn Brooks Brothers suits; but every one of them had been a member of
the same fraternity and all of them had placed power on a pedestal, and the ruthless methods they had
employed to acquire it were comparable only to the ruthless methods they had employed to keep it.
Toward "dawn" D'Arcy chose a strategically located tree, climbed into its branches, and ensconced
himself on a leafy limb that arched over the path down which the brig wardens would lead Jeanne Marie
some three hours and forty-five minutes hence. It was his plan to wrest the girl from them, head for the
nearest boat bay, board one of the escape boats, plummet to the surface of Ciel Bleu, and land in Le
Bois Feerique. There he would dig up the bow and arrows and employ them in Jeanne Marie's defense.
It was an ambitious undertaking to say the least, but it was the only chance he had.
At 0700 hours the ship's carpenters showed up and began erecting a wooden stake on the plaza.
Around it, they piled synthetic fagots that would burn with ten times the intensity of ordinary wood. After
they left, the radio-television techs came around and set up their transmitting equipment. Finally, the
maintenance crew appeared, cut a vent in the "sky" directly above the stake, installed a powerful suction
fan, and ran two hundred feet of intra-deck ventilation-tubing to the nearest exhaust lock. All was now in
readiness for the auto-da-fe.
Toward 0900 hours the Green began to fill with O'Riordan's advisors, his arbiters, his bodyguards,
his Ministers of War, his Chiefs of Staff, his Secret Police, his Civilian-Control employees, his
Reorganization employees, his Intelligence agents, his personal cuisine, and his mistresses, valets,
manicurists, barbers, physicians, and the off-duty members of the Ambassadress's crew. The
atmosphere should have been one of horror. It was nothing of the sort. There was laughter and there was
levity; there were dirty jokes and there were dirty digs. A male member of the reorganization corps
pinched a female member of the civilian-control corps; a barber stole a kiss from a manicurist behind a
weeping willow tree; a homosexual physician struck up a conversation with a homosexual chief of staff.
An intelligence agent broke out a fifth of Scotch. Blessed are the sycophants and the civil-service
seekers, D'Arcy thought, for they shall inherit the cosmos.
He was hungry and he was tired, and his arms and legs were cramped from clinging to the limb. But
he was hardly aware of any of these things. He knew only hatred and disgust.
A little after 0900 hours O'Riordan himself appeared, flanked as always by his bodyguards. Two of
the guards carried a brocaded armchair, and after the party made its way through the crowd to the edge
of the plaze, the two guards set the chair on the ground and O'Riordan seated himself. He was wearing a
snow-white uniform with epaulettes the color of blood and he was smoking a long cigar.
D'Arcy's hands had flattened of their own accord and turned themselves into deadly weapons. He
forced them to relax; forced himself to go on clinging to the limb. His one remaining mission in life was to
rescue Jeanne Marie, not to assassinate O'Riordan.
At length a silence swept the Green, and looking up the path he saw her approaching. Her
light-brown hair fell in disarray about her winsome face; her gaudy peasant garb made a vivid splash of
color upon the verdant background. As always, she was barefoot.
Accompanying her were three burly brig wardens armed with numbguns. D'Arcy raised himself to his
hands and knees and when the quartet was directly beneath him, he sprang.
Alighting on the shoulders of the warden who was bringing up the rear, he dispatched the man with a
powerful chop to the side of the neck. He was upon the second warden before the fellow had a chance
to turn all the way around. He sent him crashing to the path with a sledge-hammer rabbit punch.
By this time, warden no. 3 was in the process of drawing his numbgun. D'Arcy brought a board-like