The City Who Fought
- Автор: Маккефри Энн, Стирлинг Стивен Майкл
- Серия: brainship #4
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The City Who Fought». Краткое содержание книги:
Simeon's love of wargaming would find unexpected uses when the brutal Kolnari attack the nearby colony planet, Bethel. Sheltering the colony's refugee's brought the city an invitation to serious trouble with Kolnari pirates.
The Bethelite leader's eyes were red-rimmed, but his smile brought a warm lurch to Channa's diaphragm. "I think I have mastered the basic administrative structure," he said. "It is not too strange."
Channa raised a brow. A 900-series station isn't too strange to a backworlder? she thought.
The thought must have been obvious, but Amos only spread his hands and tossed his head, setting aswirl the coal-black curls of his shoulder-length mane. The blue eyes twinkled beneath the broad clear brow.
Oooooo, Channa thought, and fought to bring her attention back to his words.
"In any large organization, there will be certain constants," he said. "The central authority; officers in charge of various departments; a structure for meetings to coordinate activities; procedures for routine decision-making, and so forth. This is not too dissimilar to my family's holdings on Bethel. We, too, were essentially coordinators of the activities of many independent entrepreneurs. There are no ranchers or farmers here, of course, but both communities have mining, manufacturing, education, cultural facilities…"
"Culture?" Joat ducked back into the lobby, toweling her wet hair. For a wonder, she had on something more formal than the shapeless, patchwork-colorful overalls that were current fashion among SSS-900-C's youth. "Like holos and virtie games and stuff?"
"Ahhh…" Amos hesitated. He had been thinking more of choral song and traditional dancing. "The general principle is the same."
The servos had been setting out the evening meal. Simeon had programmed them to meet the basic dietary superstitions of the Bethelite religion, although Amos had turned out to be flexible. Channa shuddered mentally at some of the things she'd screened in that Bethel text. How in God's name, for example, were they supposed to check that none of the materials had ever been touched by a menstruating woman?
They sat down, Amos murmured a prayer, and for another wonder Joat waited a second before grabbing the nearest bowl. She had turned out to be a monumentally unfussy eater, but in sheer capacity she belied the scrawny underdeveloped frame. Between-or sometimes during-mouthfuls, she grilled Amos about Bethel.
"Sounds dull," she said at last.
"I thought so, too," Amos said, pushing a bowl of steamed millet closer to her. She shoveled several helpings onto her plate and heaped them with sour cream and chives.
"Joat," Channa said gently. "That really doesn't go with pineapple slices, you know."
"Why not?" Joat asked, turning to her with a milk mustache on her upper lip. The girl licked it away with satisfaction as Channa searched for a reply, gave up, and turned her attention back to Amos.
"Hiding away all that stuff was smart of Channa," she said thoughtfully. "Always gotta have supplies in your bolt-hole unless you're fardlin' stupid."
"Sound strategy," Amos said seriously.
He certainly seems to be good with children, Channa thought, stirring her food around with her fork. Girls don't bother him. Not pre-pubescent ones, at least.
In her inner ear, Simeon began to croon an ancient song: "Across a croooowded room…"
"Shut up," she subvocalized.
"This place has got more back-alleys than you'd believe," Joat was saying. "Not like a ship at all, really. You can get anywhere from anywhere and ain't nobody can stop you, if you know where you're goin'. Some of the places pinch grudly, but they're in-able if you're sveltsome."
"I would have thought it much like a ship of space," Amos replied courteously. Channa could see his lips move silently for an instant as he puzzled out Joat's slang. That was no wonder. Half of it was her own invention.
"A whole other order of magnitude," Simeon said. "No mass limits on a station-the SSS-900-C wasn't expected to go anywhere. The outer shell was fixed, as well as some of the major facilities, but the rest was intended to allow organic growth up to a couple of hundred thousand people, max. We've found natural expansion is the best way to stabilize a real community, as opposed to a transient community, like a passenger vessel."
"That is good sense," Amos said meditatively. "On my family's estate, planning towns was similar. If you set down every detail, the place has no life. When Uncle Habib decides to put his tobacco store next to Aunti Scala's pastry shop or Brother Falken's saddlery, and that brings an ice-cream parlor, it then follows that the town becomes a living and efficient entity."
"Why do you talk so funny?" Joat asked.
"Why do you talk so funny?" Amos parried, and they both laughed. "Because Bethel was cut off for so long. We did not even screen or broadcast data from other worlds, so our people's way of speech changed little, and those changes differed from those in the Central Worlds, which had dealings with many other worlds and cultures."
"Central Worlds?" Joat asked. "Oh, you're fardlin'-'cuse me-way off there. This is the hikstik, frontier, you know."
"To you, not me." He paused. "I think, Joat, that someone besides yourself should know of these hidden ways of yours."
"You should see it," she said enthusiastically. "You wouldn't believe what's back there!"
"I would very much like to see it," he told her gravely. "But, I have not much time left for my studies." Her face fell. "Still," he said, "I think that it is important that trusted people, other than just you and Simeon, should know these back ways of yours. Would you be willing to show my friend, Joseph?"
"He's your head honcho, hey?"
"My brother and my right hand," Amos said seriously.
"Okay, if he's nanna grudly."
Amos gave up trying to interpret that remark and glanced over at Simeon's image in the screen.
"Grudly," the brain said in his most professorial. "An all purpose negative. In this context-'not too grudly'-straight-laced, conventional, boring, unimaginative."
"No, no. To tell the truth and shame the devil, Joseph was, in fact, a dockside desperado when I met him," Amos said.
Joat lit up, her urchin smile taking a year or two off the extra time life had dealt her, so that she looked twelve. "Sure! I'll be glad to show Joseph around. Whenever you like."
"Thank you. And now I must return to my studies." He sighed theatrically and rose.
"I know how you feel," Joat said, shaking her head in resignation.
"He's made a conquest there," Channa subvocalized. "Wonder how he did it?"
"Joat is no longer a feral child," Simeon pointed out. "We broke the ground for him. Being glamorous doesn't hurt. And he listens to her. He's naturally interested in people, I think, under the weird socio-religious stuff they rammed down his throat."
"You're right," Channa said aloud, looking dreamily at the now closed door of Amos' quarters.
Well, Simeon-Amos, Simeon thought, you're a hit with both my girls. A petty observation, but couldn't he indulge in pettiness in the privacy of his own mind?
"'Course I'm right," Joat said. She was having more of the pineapple slices, fresh from the vats, lavishly dolloped with ice cream. "You flipping the sheets with him yet?"
"Joat!" Channa said warningly, reaching over to flick her on the ear with thumb and forefinger.
"Watch it!" Joat said, rubbing the offended lobe. "I'll report you to Gorgan the Organ." She grinned unrepentantly. "I know all about it, y'know."
"You may have observed-and I wouldn't put that past you for a nanosecond, but you don't understand what you've seen. You also have no manners."
"Yeah, that's true," Joat said complacently.
"You needn't act so smug about the lack," Simeon cut in.
"Why not?" Joat asked. "Lots of way-neat stuff you can't do if you've got manners."