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it. The spacemen who used Darlow as a stopover or a communication point had to
respect the idiosyncrasies of the people. You insult the honour of Darlow at
your peril. Pride is a dangerous thing not to have, or at least to know about,
on a world like that.
Somehow, I couldn't help thinking that Abram Adams- the senior man on the
base and virtually the world's dictator-was something other than human. I
could see hardly anything that we held in common except a shape and a
language. And the Khor-monsa always speak better English than most grounders.
The smaller a world the faster it gains and loses words from its pooled
vocabulary. The only standard tongue in this day and age is the spacer tongue.
The dome was no more than a mile across and it wasn't exactly high-density
living inside. People on little worlds like lots of personal space. New
Alexandria was prepared to cater to that, uneconomic or not. Tragedies had
been known to happen in domes in the early days, and still did sometimes. This
meant that we were each assigned quarters considerably more salubrious than a
starship cabin, and apparently quite luxurious for such a poor world. My rooms
included a sitting room whose north wall was a great curved window, commanding
a fine view of the bubble-city. The refractive effect of the dome, a plastic
interface between gases of different density and makeup, tended to blur the
aspect of the land outside the dome, refusing to admit to the sharpness and
bleakness of the landscape, but making it strange and mysterious.
I couldn't stay long in my quarters to enjoy the view-not that I enjoyed it
much anyway-because a captain has duties to perform. A mere pilot can crawl
into his shell when his ship touches down, but a captain is always a captain.
I had to see the port authority, and Adams himself, and last-but hardly
least-I had to see Charlot. I changed my clothes, and brushed my recently cut
hair, and then I sallied forth, with the habitual purposeful stride of the man
with responsibilities.
I cut it all short, not because I was in a hurry to get to Charlot, but
because I found it all mildly distasteful.
Circumstances rushed me to the inevitable confrontation. I let them.
He was waiting for me.
His face was deadpan, but I thought I could sense a trace of satisfaction-and
a hint of pain-in the way he looked at me. He was seated, and he didn't get up
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to greet me. I think the pain might have shown clearly had he attempted to
rise. There was a lamp on the desk in front of him, which he was using in
preference to the light set in the ceiling. The top half of his face was in
shadow, all except for his eyes, which caught the light and glistened.
The room was bare and the heating was turned up pretty high. I sat down
opposite him, and as he moved forward to bring himself closer to me I saw the
strain in the way he supported himself, and the deadness in the way his weight
hung about the cushioned chair. The gravity on Darlow was less than two-thirds
par, and I felt distinctly buoyant. But he'd been here for some time.
"Hello, Grainger," he said. His voice was cool and collected.
"Mr. Charlot," I acknowledged, nodding my head slightly.
"I wasn't sure that I was going to see you again," he said.
"I was sure," I told him, "but I was wrong."
"It doesn't do to be too sure," he commented. "Things happen. Things change.
One can't always see the reasons for tomorrow's actions.
"Or today's," I added.
A shadow crossed his face. "Tell me about the incident on Erica."
"There's not much to tell. The Caradoc Company apparently took note of the
fact that Fate had allowed you and I to drift apart. They took a keen
interest. They don't like me, and they have a pathological hatred of you and
yours. They seemed to feel an urgency to step into the breach between us. They
wanted to buy all that I knew about you. You know what that might be worth
better than I-or they -possibly could. I don't think they'd have got much out
of me that would repay their trouble, and I didn't want to make a deal anyhow. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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