Habu. James B. Johnson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ they shared an intellectual niche which made him comfortable and frightened him at the same time.

      Frightened him because he didn’t want to lose her. And he was due to take the Change.

      He was busily scheming how to outwit the LLI again when Alex surprised him as he’d never been surprised before.

      One shipboard day, they were floating in his cabin at zero gravity shooting rubber bands at a reading disk floating in the middle of the room.

      “And they say the ancients were the best writers,” Alex said.

      Reubin’s next shot scored and the disk spun aside.

      “The Last of the Mohicans. Too bad that didn’t occur one generation earlier.”

      “Don’t blame the Mohicans, Rube—”

      “Reubin.”

      “—it’s the writer.” Alex floated around collecting rubber bands.

      “How in hell could such trash last so many centuries and remain acclaimed literature?” Reubin scratched his head. “Trumped up plot, illogical choreography, major characters with the brains of dinosaurs. And I still don’t understand that business about the fog and the bodies and the lake and—”

      Alex came back toward him, grasping his knee to steady herself in midair. All that happened was that they both began a slow spin. “The whole thing’s a matter of theme of national definition. See Hawkeye as a messiah, or a legendary mythical persona, such as Audie Murphy, Captain Danjou, Habu.”

      He winced and grunted.

      Habu mythical? Not when he was alive in this very room. It was always disquieting when people talked about Habu in front of him.

      But her next words made him forget. “Reubin?”

      He wrapped a rubber band around the base of his thumb and snapped the end on the tip of his pointy fin­ger. “Umm?”

      “If I take the Change with you, would you marry me honest and true and could we go out to the frontier to­gether and pioneer and explore and live happily ever after together?”

      After a moment of looking into her eyes, he said, “You’d do that?”

      “In a Manhattan minute.”

      “No questions asked?” he said, face burning.

      “I already know what I need to know,” she said con­tentedly.

      “Your daughter? Tique?”

      “She’s been taking care of herself for sixty odd years now. It’s the relationship I’d miss.” She paused. “We’ve some friction now. She thinks I’m a corporate mogul who rapes the land. I think she’s an eco-freak. But re­gardless....”

      He let out the breath he realized he’d been holding. He grasped her hand and steadied them by a handhold of the ceiling. “I haven’t felt like this in two or three hundred years.” The more Changes some went through, the more precipitate their decisions. The more they were wont to do offbeat things. Reubin hoped this romance wasn’t a result of too many Changes. He wanted it to be real.

      “Me neither. You gonna answer my question?”

      “I love you, Silver Girl.” His words surprised even himself.

      “Me, too, Mystery Man. I want to spend a lifetime or two with you.”

      “I suspect it’ll be an adventure,” he said.

      In the big lounge with a hundred wealthy tourists from the sector capital looking on, Reubin Flood and Alex­andra Sovereign were married.

      Captain Kent, in full uniform, said, “Do you, Reubin Flood, take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife, in this life, through a Change or two, unless necessary?”

      “Yes, I do,” said Reubin.

      Captain Kent turned to Alex. “You don’t have to do this, my dear.”

      “I want to.”

      “Do you, Alexandra Felicity Partmandahl Sovereign, of your own free will, take this man to be your lawful husband, in this life, and through a Change or two if you don’t get divorced?”

      “I do.”

      “By the power vested in me by the Federation and its laws, I now pronounce you matrimonially linked. Stew­ard? Champagne, if you will.”

      Habu observed the ceremony unhappily. Reubin was able to force him back into hibernation.

      Alex was to return to Snister, wind up her affairs, bid her daughter good-bye, and join Reubin on Webster’s, where they would go to the LLI together.

      Reubin had some business of his own to tend to on Webster’s. While he’d been essentially a nomad for the last twenty years or so, there were still things he had to do: consolidate bank accounts, prepare false identities in case of emergencies, and illegally access the LLI com­puters. The latter was for him to use programs he’d in­stalled secretly when helping to build the system. He was able to add his new fake identities and their histories to the LLI database, and play games with the DNA tags, thus effectively covering his trail. For a few centuries, his Habu instinct had warned him when the Fed authorities occasionally were closing in on him. He didn’t know if the infamous Habu would be reason enough for the Fed to prevail upon the LLI to help them find him legally or illegally; if so, his preemptive raid into the LLI database would preclude that and his trail would dead-end. Another reason for sneaking into the LLI system was that he could preselect his destination afterward—if he wanted to.

      While the LLI process could be accomplished any­where, it was done on sector capitals so that mandatory one-way transport to the various frontiers could be ar­ranged. Occasionally, for those who could afford the LLI treatment and could not afford the expense of the trip to the sector capitals throughout the Federation, the LLI maintained roving ships that made planetfall all over the galaxy at random intervals. Or a local or planetary government could request one of the ships by paying costs. Sometimes this was accomplished to re­duce population.

      Two vastly different things contributed to people living many centuries.

      The first, and the easiest for Reubin to understand, was that because of star travel, people zapping back and forth throughout the explored portion of the galaxy, people aged differently. Added to that, medicine and preventa­tive aging (PA) contributed to long life.

      But the major contributor to long life was Silas Com­fort Swallow. Silas Swallow invented FTL—or his Project I did. Swallow controlled it. Being the first to come up with FTL, he was the first to explore the galaxy near Olde Earthe. He also sold FTL to most of the rest of the Earthe. For cash and a percentage. He became the wealthiest man ever known at any time in the history of man. Every off-Earthe enterprise paid into Swallow’s ac­counts. He also owned all the nearby planets which could be settled by humans. More money.

      He could afford the research. He spawned Project II, allegedly based on the mythical man who never aged, or aged in reverse, Pembroke Wyndham,

      Reubin knew a few more of the particulars of СКАЧАТЬ