Power Lines
- Автор: Маккефри Энн, Скарборо Элизабет
- Серия: Petaybee #2
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Power Lines». Краткое содержание книги:
Only solid evidence would convince the company to leave the planet alone, and for all its sentience, Petaybee's communications were highly subjective; indeed, some outsiders seemed entirely immune to its voice. So Yana and her friends would have to find some other way to prove that the planet was worth more to the company alive than dead...
And that was after they were finally on their way. The man had dawdled an unconscionably long time loading various items into the cargo net behind the seats. In fact, the copter would have been quite large enough for all of Matthew's assistants, had it not been for this cargo.
"Here, can't you leave that behind?" he'd demanded at one point when his patience was strained, but the pilot just smiled and said, "No can do, sir. The villagers at the Fjord need this stuff. Be with you in a jiff."
Then had come the dreadful flight and Braddock regurgitating all over the floor, so they'd had to smell it during the entire first leg of the trip.
When they landed at Harrison's Fjord, a pretty little place, he disembarked from the aircraft to allow Braddock to clean up his mess and found himself a boulder to occupy up wind, where he could continue his annotations. The pilot opened all the windows and doors to flush out the rest of the stench.
"Gotta unload, Dr. Luzon," the man said, although Matthew had assumed an attitude that few would have bothered to interrupt. "And refuel. Might as well take on some grub now." Then he lowered his voice so that his words would not carry to Braddock, lying on a mossy stretch of ground, legs drawn up to his aching belly. "They do good fish fries." Matthew waved his hand dismissively at the mention of such greasy fare. "And," the pilot went on, indicating Braddock, "get him an air sickness pill. He ought to have mentioned the problem before we took off."
Matthew nodded, wondering why the pilot had not had the courtesy to inquire before they took off from SpaceBase. Then the village folk arrived to help unload, and the pilot turned to greet the one woman in the group. She was a slightly different rustic type from those Matthew had seen in Kilcoole. She chatted affably with the pilot as he and some of the men unloaded the helicopter. Matthew wrote down the iniquities of the flight he had just endured to be sure they were entered onto the pilot's record. He noticed that someone had given Braddock a blanket to keep off the chill of wind stirred by the idly rotating propeller blades.
Scanning the village, Matthew assumed that the chief industry was fishing. No doubt this would present a fruitful sub-culture to study, since coastal peoples occupying somewhat more temperate areas undoubtedly had customs, mores, and folkways that differed from those in the interior. He made a note, since Braddock was in no position to take dictation, to return for a proper investigation later.
When he made one more sweeping scan of the village before reboarding the newly lightened copter, he was surprised to notice, sunning itself in the doorway, a very large cat. About the size of a panther, he supposed, except that it did not have the conformation of one of those sleek, predatory, and now almost extinct beasts. Though large, it was more like an immense domestic feline, with rather common black and white markings. Possibly one of the track-cats he had heard so much about: one of the miraculous beasts said to have aided in the rescue of the Fiskes and to have been instrumental in the healing of Frank Metaxos.
He stood up, closing his notepad and wondering if it was wise to approach the beast. It did not seem to be under anyone's control. If it happened to be a stray, perhaps he could acquire it for the laboratory and extensive examination. He was about to order the pilot to have the beast caged until he could return for it when the pilot beckoned urgently to him and unceremoniously boosted him back aboard. Braddock was already belted in, thankfully looking more sleepy than nauseated. Before Matthew could mention the cat or protest their precipitous departure, the rotors were whirling and the aircraft was up over the deep waters of the fjord, well above the masts of some primitive sailing craft.
Oddly, the flight to the southern continent was markedly absent of the turbulence they had encountered over land. Matthew attempted to shout over the noise in the cabin, a query about the village they had just left. He finally resorted to touching Greene's shoulder to get his attention. The man merely smiled affably. tapping his earphones, and shrugged. Matthew subsided in his seat and tightened his seat belt-then had to loosen it slightly or risk cutting off the circulation in his torso. He did not like being isolated by the exigencies of travel and wondered why there was only one headset. So he made a tremendous effort to contain himself during what was likely to be a very dull and long journey. Fortunately the cold air and the smells of machine oil covered the faint residue of Braddock's indiscretion.
Every time Matthew flew in one of these vehicles, he resolved to take flying lessons, for the procedures seemed ridiculously simple, but he never seemed to find the time for the formal course. Once, a long-gone member of his bevy of assistants, a perhaps too easily influenced young man, had showed an aptitude for flying. Unfortunately, as soon as he had learned to fly, his personality changed, and he no longer demonstrated the qualities of unswerving loyalty and unquestioning obedience Matthew insisted upon in an assistant.
He suspected that the man flying the copter was not of the caliber required in an aide either. Matthew's opinion was confirmed when he retrieved a report from his case and noticed, stowed under his seat, the headphones that should immediately have been offered to him by Greene. At once, he plugged these into the socket on the armrest and placed them over his ears. A burst of static poured through them that made him wrench them off.
Tapping the pilot authoritatively on the shoulder, he pointed at the headset. Grinning, the pilot shook his head, moved his mouth piece aside, and leaned over to say, "Don't work!"
Matthew's reactions included amazement, anger, frustration, and total disgust with the inefficiency and indifference shown by the inhabitants of this world. People were scattered all over the universe, some of them living in highly sophisticated, totally engineered environments, all scrupulously maintained by Intergal. He ended up on an incredibly primitive world with a headset, similar to hundreds he had used before, that failed to work due to what was surely an easily remedied technical difficulty.
Of course, this sort of aircraft was only slightly improved over its ancient counterpart. The old ones had had neither speed nor range and had been limited in the altitudes they could achieve. This particular one, with its incidental malfunctions, was by no means state-of-the-art: it hadn't the power to lift out of the planet's atmosphere, and was excruciatingly noisy.
However, it required very little space to land, could hover, and could set down safely, if necessary, at night unaided by light from the ground. That ability, he reflected, as he studied the map printout on his wrist unit, was a necessary requirement.
He wanted to ask the pilot if flights to the southern continent were frequent. Surely they must be. This planet north and south, had long been used for troop recruitment, an occupation the so-called sentient world did not seem to obstruct. Ah, and he qualified that as he remembered his notes. It was the young who answered recruitment drafts: those who had not yet been mutated by whatever toxins in their soil produced the glandular deformity and the deposit of "brown fat" that supposedly allowed older members of the population to survive the extreme temperatures.
The nearest city to Harrison's Fjord on the southern continent was Bogota, at the mouth of the Lacrimas River. The sizable peninsula on which the city was situated extruded like a big, clumsy thumb into the sea. He had, of course, scrutinized the maps of this region, now entering its winter season. Most of the population centers-one could hardly call them cities-were situated on the coastal plains near the major rivers: Bogota on the Lacrimas, Kabul on the eastern fork of the New Ganges, and Lhasa on the Sierra Sangre. Another village called Sierra Padre was located farther up the Sierra Sangre at the foot of the Sierra Padre Mountains. A settlement known as Kathmandu was isolated within yet another mountain range, optimistically dubbed the Shambalas.