Semper Mars. Ian Douglas

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ game that I don’t understand. But I can tell you, I don’t like it.”

      He looked away for a long moment. “Something else I don’t like,” he said finally, turning back to face her. “This…uneasy dance we’re doing with the UN. I know we have to let them use our cyclers by treaty, but why we’re letting them horn in on our explorations on Mars is beyond me. Do they really think we’d hog all the goodies? I don’t know.”

      “There’s something that happened today I want to tell you about. It…it disturbed me, and I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe you can help me make some sense out of it. So long, Chicako. When next you see me, I’ll be on the beach.” His mouth twisted in a wry grin. “No ocean, unfortunately, but it’ll be nice to have ground underfoot again. Till then.” His face stayed on the screen for a full second and then dissolved into a string of numbers—the rest of his message was in code.

      They’d started writing in code right after her mother died. A big, grown-up seven-year-old girl didn’t really want to put down in writing that she was scared, that she missed her mommy, that she wished her daddy could be home with her instead of being stationed overseas. So her dad had taught her a simple substitution code so she could say all those things without anyone else knowing what she was saying.

      Over the years their codes became more and more sophisticated, until now they were using a Beale code, guaranteed unbreakable without the book the code is based on. And that was the beauty of it. It could be any book; it was simply necessary that the two parties agree on the book and, specifically, on the edition of that book. For the Mars trip, the Garroways had agreed on a 2038 reprinting of Shogun, a twentieth-century novel about sixteenth-century Japan. Kaitlin had downloaded both the book and her own Beale code translation program to her dad’s wrist-top before he’d left for Vandenberg.

      Since then he’d used the Beale code routine for a part of just about every letter he’d sent her, but in the seven months that he’d been gone on the Polyakov, he’d only used it once or twice for more than a one- or two-liner. She paged down and estimated that, decoded, the message would probably run four or five paragraphs.

      Kaitlin selected the text and ran her Beale code routine, wishing she could talk to him. V-mail was great, but there were still limitations. On the other hand, if he were here in person, he probably wouldn’t talk about what was bothering him. He was a very private person. Maybe writing about whatever it was that had happened was the only way he could let it out.

      As she began to read the translated text, she found herself growing cold. “Consorting with the enemy,” he called it. Just because the woman was working for the UN? What is this? It’s not as though we’re at war or anything. She wondered what her father would think of her relationship with Yukio and was suddenly very glad she hadn’t told him about her proposed trip to Japan.

      A shadow fell over her PAD, and she looked up, startled. The backlit figure looming above her raised his hands in mock horror. “I didn’t do it! Honest! Whatever it was, it wasn’t me!”

      She quickly tapped on the screen, hiding the message in the background. “Oh, it’s just Dad,” she said, as Yukio coiled down beside her.

      “Ah.”

      Kaitlin folded up her PAD and tucked it back into its case. “And just what does ‘ah’ mean?” she asked.

      He smiled. “It means that occasionally experiencing a lack of harmony with one’s paternal ancestor appears not to be an exclusively Japanese trait.”

      “Ah.”

      “Exactly.” He began twining his fingers through her hair. “Have I mentioned lately that I love you, Chicako?”

      She grinned. “Not since we got out of bed this morning, Snow Boy,” she replied, using a rough translation of his name. She put her arms around his neck to greet him properly. “You’re good for me, did you know that?”

      “Mmm,” he murmured as he responded warmly to her kiss. “You’ve said something about that a time or two before, I believe.”

      After a long moment, she pulled back. “You know, I’m kind of glad I stopped by the Japanese Room that day.”

      He nodded. “Me too. But we would have met eventually. It was fated.”

      Kaitlin looked quizzically at him. “Do you believe that? Do you really believe everything will work out for us?”

      He turned very serious eyes toward her. “Those are two distinct questions, Kaitlin. Ones that do not necessarily have the same answer.”

      There was no response to make to that, so she made none. She knew what he meant; there was no point in going over it again. Instead she opened her belt pouch and pulled out the two quick-pak lunches she’d picked up earlier at the campus store.

      “The landing is only a few days away now, isn’t it?” Yukio asked as he produced two cold-bottles out of a hip pouch. He thumbed them open and handed one to her.

      Kaitlin took a sip and then another. “Mmm, kiwi, that’s good.” She pressed a button on her wrist-top to check the calendar. “Yes. Three days. They should rendezvous with the landers Saturday morning.”

      “It is not a Japanese sentiment, but I…I envy them.” He tore off the lunch pack’s lid and started to eat it.

      Her mouth quirked in a wry grin. “It’s funny, isn’t it. Here the two of us are, dying to go into space. And there’s my dad on his way to Mars, and he doesn’t even want to be there! He keeps complaining about being bored!” She picked a processed seabar out of her lunch and started chewing on it.

      “Is that what was…bothering you?”

      She swallowed and took a deep breath. Might as well talk about it. “No. It was politics again. Damn, I hate politics!”

      Yukio shrugged. “Politics is nothing more than two people trying to decide if they can share a bowl of rice, or if one of them will use his sword to ensure that all the rice is his. It is as much a part of being human as breathing.”

      “Well, then maybe being human ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Why can’t people just work together without all this stupid squabbling? Why can’t we take care of each other instead of fighting over who gets the scraps?”

      “It is not in our heritage to be kind to others when we haven’t enough for ourselves. Altruism is not a survival trait, Kaitling.”

      She grinned at his deliberate mispronunciation of her name. Yukio was proud of his English, justifiably so, and this past year had delighted in adding English puns to his repertoire.

      “Well, I’m not entirely sure what the bowl of rice is, in this case, but the guys with swords seem to be two of the archeologists. Actually, the problem seems to be that they’re not using their swords but Dad thinks they should. I don’t know. I think this metaphor is getting bent all out of shape.” She finished up the seabar and started in on the edible packaging.

      “There are lots more where that one came from.”

      She laughed. “Maybe I should just try to tell the story straight. Dad feels strongly that Americans should not be…intimate with UN personnel. In fact, he went so far as to call it ‘consorting with the enemy.’ Can you believe that?”

      Yukio СКАЧАТЬ