JК
Crashlander :: Нивен Ларри
Страница: 21 из 199» But two long necks had drawn back, and the puppeteerwas watching me like a pair of pythons.
«You'd know what a tide was if you had a moon. You couldn't avoid it.»
«Would you be interested in —»
«A million stars? I'd be fascinated. I'll even sign a contract if it states what we're hiding. How do you like being blackmailed for a change?»
GHOST: TWO
I tried to script the story myself, of course. There was a computer program that would do it as an interview. I made lots of notes … too many notes, because any time I tried to write text for myself, I blocked.
So I advertised for a ghost.
Ander Smittarasheed answered.
His type was familiar enough. He was a gaudy flatlander athlete, too aware of the limps and lames around him, very aware that any woman was his for the asking. It all showed in his words and body language.
Maybe I wouldn't even have hired him, but he just pushed into the situation without giving me a chance to react. Before my caution caught up, I was telling him everything … nearly everything. He turned it into a one-act play between me and the interview program, all in one afternoon. We spent two days polishing before we filmed it. The recording sold instantly to the nets.
He could write. That in itself was amazing.
I said, «I couldn't tell you about the blackmail aspect.» We weren't shouting now. The undersea dome isn't really glass; it's something that absorbs shock waves, including sound, not to mention tsunamis.
Ander Smittarasheed grinned at me patronizingly. «Did you think you were putting something over on General Products!»
«At the time. I still don't know for sure. Maybe I was crazy to think that a spacegoing species wouldn't understand tides.»
«Maybe. But why would they send a human pilot to learn what they already knew?»
«Mmm … Ander, look at it this way. A university team sets out to investigate a cold neutron star. They make a mistake, probably without informing General Products, but they're using a GP hull. The ship comes back with the pilots dead in vividly gory fashion. General Products works out how it happened, but they'd rather not be seen as making excuses. Why not let someone of the same species solve the problem and then talk for them?»
«They seem to have had a good deal of faith in you.»
I laughed as if I hadn't a care in the world. «Oh, Ander. I wonder how many times they tried it.»
He thought it over. «No. They showed Sigmund your contract. They would have had to do that several times.»
«Yeah.
«You'd know what a tide was if you had a moon. You couldn't avoid it.»
«Would you be interested in —»
«A million stars? I'd be fascinated. I'll even sign a contract if it states what we're hiding. How do you like being blackmailed for a change?»
GHOST: TWO
I tried to script the story myself, of course. There was a computer program that would do it as an interview. I made lots of notes … too many notes, because any time I tried to write text for myself, I blocked.
So I advertised for a ghost.
Ander Smittarasheed answered.
His type was familiar enough. He was a gaudy flatlander athlete, too aware of the limps and lames around him, very aware that any woman was his for the asking. It all showed in his words and body language.
Maybe I wouldn't even have hired him, but he just pushed into the situation without giving me a chance to react. Before my caution caught up, I was telling him everything … nearly everything. He turned it into a one-act play between me and the interview program, all in one afternoon. We spent two days polishing before we filmed it. The recording sold instantly to the nets.
He could write. That in itself was amazing.
I said, «I couldn't tell you about the blackmail aspect.» We weren't shouting now. The undersea dome isn't really glass; it's something that absorbs shock waves, including sound, not to mention tsunamis.
Ander Smittarasheed grinned at me patronizingly. «Did you think you were putting something over on General Products!»
«At the time. I still don't know for sure. Maybe I was crazy to think that a spacegoing species wouldn't understand tides.»
«Maybe. But why would they send a human pilot to learn what they already knew?»
«Mmm … Ander, look at it this way. A university team sets out to investigate a cold neutron star. They make a mistake, probably without informing General Products, but they're using a GP hull. The ship comes back with the pilots dead in vividly gory fashion. General Products works out how it happened, but they'd rather not be seen as making excuses. Why not let someone of the same species solve the problem and then talk for them?»
«They seem to have had a good deal of faith in you.»
I laughed as if I hadn't a care in the world. «Oh, Ander. I wonder how many times they tried it.»
He thought it over. «No. They showed Sigmund your contract. They would have had to do that several times.»
«Yeah.