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out that the Meijians would pay through their noses for rockcrawler claws and
we saved every penny.
Now we've got four trawlers and damned good ones, and best of all the Alicia.
You all know what it'll mean, being able to tap the Thule Sea shoals;
off-planet exchange, for one thing. No reason to let the
Newfies get it all."
Cheers and jeers; nobody much liked the secretive and clannish settlers of New
Newfoundland, the big island in the gulf where the Oinos Sea met the outer
Jefferson Ocean.
"I'd like to thank everyone who helped make it possible," he went on. "Even
Consolidated Hume
Financial." More laughter, sheepishly joined in by the representative of the
bank in his conservative brown tunic and sash and knee-breeches. Well, nobody
loves a banker, Armstrong thought. Especially
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for capital and with a strict hard-money policy. "And the great people from
Huang, Lee and Parkinson." The shipbuilders; his sincerity came through. "My
friends from the
Association, who paid as the only way to shut me up and get me out of Sparta
City" cries of protest and a few half-eaten rolls flew past his ears, with the
odd "damn straight" "and most of all, my wife.
My only regret is she isn't coming with us but she's got the best excuse I can
think of."
Six months of pregnancy, now showing considerably. She put her hand on her
stomach and met his eyes.
"Yeah, Armstrong, but when's yours due?" Sven Nyqvist said, poking a stubby
finger into his captain's midriff. Steven Armstrong's booming voice led the
laughter.
* * *
"Thank Christ that's over," he muttered, standing beside the wheel of the
Alicia. Dockside was a kilometer to the west now, Sparta City a sprawl of
white and pastel and greenery across its hills. And the dockside crowds, and
the reporters.
The Capital Herald's little newsblimp was still overhead, with the irritating
buzz of its twin engines; he was strongly tempted to give it the finger. No.
The cameras could count the hairs in your nose from 800
meters. Too many watching, he thought. Ignore them.
As he'd ignored the reporters with their asinine questions. "Why do you want
to enslave the transportees, Senator Armstrong?"
"Assholes."
"Sir?" from the helmsman.
"Steady as she goes. Just glad to get out of town. If I never see another
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equals sign, it'll be too soon."
"Amen," said the helmsman.
Enslave the transportees, Armstrong thought disgustedly. Sweet Christ, I
married a transportee, didn't I?
Many of his best workers were transportees, and he had sponsored a half-dozen
into the Brotherhood of
Poseidon after helping them make Citizen. Even the common ruck of them weren't
too bad, once they learned they couldn't sit in the gutter and live on
handouts here. He snorted again; anyone who starved on Sparta deserved it; you
could eat for a week on two day's wages for casual labor. Hell, you can walk
out of town and throw rocks at the rabbits. He'd done that himself as a boy,
when times were really hard.
No, it was the real scum that needed attention. Not those scooped up by
BuReloc for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like Alicia's parents;
the real criminals, the pimps and street-gangers and whores. Bad enough they
cut each other up down in Minetown, dropped their bastards in the gutters
without even caring enough to take them to the nuns. Now they were swarming
into that son-of-a-bitch
Croser's NCLF, outnumbering the real workingmen in the Dockworkers' and half a
dozen other unions.
Strikes only last month he'd lost fifteen tons of rockcrawler while they
struck the packing-plant over some idiot political thing. Killings, like that
mess at the Spartosky. Thank God Alicia hadn't been there.
"Aaah, enough politics," he muttered.
He pushed the captain's cap back on his head and worked the cigar to the
corner of his mouth. One of cookie's stewards brought him a cup of coffee the
way he liked it, black and sweet, and he cupped his hands around the thick
white china. The Alicia was making good speed, seven knots; not wise to go
much faster. Constitution Bay had enough sandbars and shallow water to give a
strong man the willies.
She would do better out in the open ocean, though. He looked around with
pride: fifteen hundred tons, good von Alderheim steel for the hull, decking
and upperworks of redwood. Two thousand-horsepower diesels with electric
transmission, burbling their song of power through his feet. Deck-winches,
nets, processing-holds and bunkrooms, all the best that Sparta City could
make, and that was damned good.
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Even off-planet electronics, echo-sounder and radar.
The horseshoe bridge with its consoles and dials smelled of paint and seasoned
wood and very slightly of the vegetable-oil fuel burned by the engines; he
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zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkwiatpolny.htw.pl
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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