Brian Stableford - Hooded Swan 2 - Rhapsody in Black.pdf - Brian Stableford - margozap

ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Brian Stableford

Rhapsody in Black

I spent two long years on a bleak world circling a cold sun on the edge of the Halcyon

Drift. I was lucky. There was air, and water, and the local vegetation was digestible

enough to keep me alive — just. I was also unlucky. My ship was smashed and my

partner was dead and even with a bleep sending out a perpetual cry for help the situation

had a hint of the hopeless about it. Those two years did me more harm than the half-a-

lifetime I had spent in space. A spaceman's expectancy of life is not so grand that two

years can go missing and not matter.

1 had little to occupy my time on the rock except survival and standing up the cross on

Lapthorn's grave every time the wind blew it down - which was often. I had memories, but

I'm not a man to derive much warmth from memories, and they were more like ghosts

that haunted me. Ultimately, the wind began to talk to me. I listened. I was picked up by a

ramrod which was searching for the legendary 'Lost Star' and had homed in on the

wrong bleep. The wind still talked to me - I had picked up a parasite, and acquired a

companion for all time. I didn't like him (/ thought of it as 'him'). He took some getting

used to. 1 felt bad enough after two years on the rock {I called it Lapthorn's Grave) but

the Caradoc Company, who owned the ramrod which lifted me, were intent on making

things worse. They claimed a salvage fee. The court sided with them, and before I knew

where I was I’d been dumped on Earth with a debt of twenty thousand hanging over the

rest of my life like the Sword of Damocles. It’s a hard life.

1 went to look up some people. The man who'd taught me to fly was dead. All that

remained of my distant past was an empty workshop and Herault’s grandson. Lapthorn’s

family were alive and well and interested, but I wanted nothing to do with them. I'd had

my fill of ghosts and 1 wanted to forget poor Lapthorn. Even that was not to be. I had to

get work, and the only work that was offered to me was a job flying the 'Hooded Swan'

for a New Alexandrian scientist/politician named Titus Charlot. The job was worth

twenty thousand over two years but the contract I signed virtually sold my soul to

Charlot. Charlot figured himself as puppet-master to the galaxy - alien races as well as

human. I didn't see it that way, and neither did the galaxy. I knew as soon as I saw him

that I was in for a rough spell. The 'Swan' was a great ship - the best - but her crew was

makeshift. In the beginning she had a good engineer in Rothgar, but he soon figured out

what was what and quit like a sensible man. The ones who stayed were all people I'd

rather not have had around. Nick delArco was the captain - he'd built the ship and he

was a very pleasant and gentle man, but he wasn't competent to take charge of a

ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

perambulator. Eve Lapthorn was reserve pilot. Johnny Socoro - Herault's grandson - was

reserve engineer, and he got quick promotion, which made him big-headed as well as

hot-headed.

Job number one was a crazy jaunt in pursuit of the good old legendary 'Lost Star' bleep.

It was a fashionable way of committing suicide just then. We won the race for our little-

loved but much-respected owner, but nobody reaped much of a harvest from the affair.

People got killed, including a friend of mine named Alachakh. People do get killed, I

know, but I'm not a violent man and I don't like to be around when it happens. The better

I got to know Charlot the better I understood the fact that I was liable to be around when

some more people got killed. The Companies, including Caradoc, were expanding at a

phenomenal rate, and the commercial subjugation of the galaxy was well under way.

New Alexandria and New Rome were the only forces trying to keep the lid on, and I was

just one of the recruits to their cause. I didn't know how long the balance of power would

stay balanced, but I knew I didn't want to be around when it tipped. Trouble and strife

were on the way, and I didn’t like the prospect of being a pawn in the game.

I handled the 'Lost Star' affair brilliantly. But that was only the beginning.

• Calm down, urged the whisper.

I stopped, breathing heavily, to take stock of myself and of the situation. I was

ankle-deep in cold, slimy water, and my flashlight was noticeably weaker. Perhaps I had

every right to a touch of panic in my movements, but the wind obviously thought that I

was overdoing it.

• You can't go much farther at this pace, he said. You'll drive yourself to

prostration. And there's no point. They gave up chasing you twenty minutes ago. They've

got better sense than to lose themselves down here.

ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

He was only trying to be helpful. In his fashion, he was always trying to be

helpful. I found his eternal vigilance and limitless fount of common sense to be overly

patronising and rather irritating. I had not yet conceded him the right to be as concerned

for my welfare as I was, despite the fact that he had a similarly considerable stake in it.

(But there was one important difference, of course. He could always find new lodgings if

his present slum was condemned. I couldn't.)

‘This light,' I told him, 'is going to go out before we've covered many more miles.'

• So? The locals don't carry flashlights. They manage in the dark.

'All very well if you know where you're going, and have been walking blindfold

around these caves since you were two years old.'

• You're not afraid of the dark, are you?

'Yes.'

• In that case, why did you ever start out on this idiot's crusade?

'You know damn well. You were there, remember? I didn't start the thing. I didn't

want any part of it. It was Sampson and Johnny.'

• They didn't force you to leave your comfortable jail cell.

'No, but with the door standing open like that, squatting in the cage till doomsday

suddenly seemed to be a most unattractive prospect.'

• And so you ran. Well now, here you are. On the run and soon to be in the dark.

ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

We can go back, you know, and ask them to lock you up again. If that's what you want,

decide now and turn round. If that's not what you want, then start thinking about where

we're going, and why.

'At this moment,' I said, 'I'm not in a very good spot for sitting down to work out a

strategy. Besides which, I'm in the dark in more ways than one.'

To this, he made no verbal reply. He held his peace, allowing me to go the way of

my choice without further delay. I could sense neither approval nor disapproval when I

went forward again. In all probability, he couldn't make up his mind what he wanted us to

do either.

I stumbled on along the tunnel. My right hand balanced me against the wall which

I was following, while the left held the flashlight, swinging it in steady arcs to show me

as much as possible of the way I had chosen to go. There was just black water and black

stone, but it meant a lot just to be able to see it. The tunnel was wide here, and a

comfortable height, and the flash couldn't do a very efficient job of highlighting the far

wall. There was a circular yellow blur, and that was all.

I tried to run, but running through shallow water is just not practicable where any

sort of distance is involved, and I had to settle for slow, purposeful wading. But I still

concentrated all my effort on progress, and spared no part of my mind for contemplating

destinations.

• We can't just run, said the whisper, trying to prompt me. Not in a place like this.

You can run until you drop, and still be nowhere. You've got to have some kind of a

pattern in mind. You've got to decide the sort of hand you're trying to play. It's not

enough simply to be down here. We have to have a reason. Now you're here, you have to

try to cut yourself some kind of slice of the action. It's not enough just to wander around

and get lost. There must be thousands of miles of cave and shaft in this honeycomb. You

could die and your bones need never be discovered. You've got to have something in your

mind.

'I have,' I said. 'You.'

• This is no time for indulging your ridiculous sense of humour.

ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

'On the contrary. This is exactly the sort of time to which my sense of humour is

tailored.'

• Be reasonable!

There should have been a thousand reasons why the wind and I were

incompatible. But that was the only one that really bugged him.

'Look,' I said. 'For the time being, there's only one way to go. We're in a tunnel,

right? When I get offered alternatives, that's the time I begin making choices. And even

then it won't be too difficult. I don't want to be any farther up, because it's too damn cold

where I am. Ergo I want to go down. And, if I remember correctly, the way to navigate to

the lower strata of an alveolar system is to follow the current of cold air.'

• You don't know anything about navigation in alveolar systems.

'I know enough of the jargon to provide excuses for anything I choose to do. And

I know that hot air rises and cold air falls. That's all that's relevant at present.'

• It's not as simple as that, he said darkly.

I was slowing down. The water was creeping up my calves. The bitter cold was

numbing my feet and sending shooting pains up my legs. The hand which I was using to

support myself was suffering, too. Except where it was encrusted with lichenous growths,

the rock was like sandpaper. It spoke well for the constancy and stability of the system

that the water had never come up far enough to erode the surface smooth, but it was hell

on my fingertips. The cold was beginning to soak into my insides, as well. I’d had to

come up rather than going down in order to avoid the initial pursuit. Being linked to the

surface lock, the reception area where we'd been imprisoned was above the capital and

the highways. Hence, to go down would be to play into the hands of the enemy. But I'd

shaken off the nasties some time back, and I'd covered enough sideways ground to be

fairly certain that I wouldn't drop back into the streets of the capital.

The problem was what to do when I did get back down to the inhabited strata.

Before the breakout, Johnny had been rambling about some vague and ridiculous scheme

to steal surface suits and win our way back to the Hooded Swan. No doubt he had some

ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Brian Stableford - Hooded Swan 2 - Rhapsody in Black.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: