Terminal White. James Axler
Читать онлайн.| Название | Terminal White |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | James Axler |
| Жанр | Морские приключения |
| Серия | Gold Eagle Outlanders |
| Издательство | Морские приключения |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9781474027557 |
Designated Task #012: Sex
All residents of Ioville are expected to engage in sexual congress four times a month. Partners are selected by strict rotation to increase the chances of pregnancy. Partners are provided blind each session, and while the subject is given no choice over whom, the longevity of the operation and health of the participants are constantly assessed.
Like all functions in Ioville, the sex act is methodical and devoid of emotional resonance. It is a means to an end: the creation of children to people the ville in subsequent years. The birthrate is high, due to the strict methods employed.
My ovulation rhythms have not been fully recorded yet, which means I have yet to be slotted into the rotation. Here in Ioville no act is wasted.
Grand nurseries have been created to house the youngest of the newborns while their parents continue to perform their designated tasks. The nurseries look after the well-being and education of the children through to age eleven, at which point the young are redesignated as adults and are welcomed into the workforce, where they will be assigned their tasks. With this redesignation they are expected to engage in Designated Task #012.
—From the journal of Citizen 619F.
The bastard child of a thousand deluded devotees hurtled toward Kane across the flame-lit temple, an unearthly howl issuing from its gaping wound of a mouth.
Kane’s Sin Eater appeared in his hand, the hidden handblaster materializing from its forearm holster. The former Magistrate began blasting a stream of 9 mm titanium-shelled bullets at the eight-foot-tall monster as it charged across the slate floor at him. Its composite arms reached out and batted the bullets aside like a tumble of dislodged shale flickering through the air, lines of blood rippling between each loose stone. And then the creature reached for Kane as the horrified pilgrims watched, its stony arm distending and parting as it grasped for Kane’s weapon.
How do I get myself into these jams? Kane wondered as that inhuman arm reached for the barrel of his blaster.
Eighty-six minutes earlier
THE TOWER COULD be seen from miles away, its red eye shining even through the pouring rain that darkened the skies.
“The last time I was here,” Brigid Baptiste explained, “this whole place was just a field of beets.”
Kane pushed apart the canvas covers of the transport wag with his hands and peered out at the road. The canvas was heavy from the rain, and Kane felt a wash of rainwater run over his hand and down his arm as he adjusted the flaps to see.
They were bumping along a gravel road that was perfectly straight and was bordered on either side by a line of carefully matched stones placed at roughly twelve-foot intervals. Carved from slate, each stone was disc-like and flat like a roof tile, and each measured eight feet in height, its base sunken into the ground. The gray slate had turned black with the rainwater, and the curtain of rain continued to fall, drenching the road, the wag, the standing stones and everything else in its chilling torrent. Beyond those stones were meadows of wildflowers, their colors vibrant even now, seen through the morning shower. To Kane, a trained Magistrate, the stones looked like sentries, guarding the pathway up to their destination, the red-eyed tower.
“Never much liked beets,” Kane muttered as the rugged transport jounced along the road, the shushing noise of the gravel and the rain mingling to a roar as loud as a waterfall.
Kane was a clean-shaven, muscular man in his early thirties, with steel-gray eyes and short dark hair. He stood an inch over six feet tall and there was something of the wolf about him, not only because of his build but also because of the way his eyes took in everything and the way he always seemed to be alone no matter the company he was in. He was both a pack leader and a loner, just like the strongest wolf.
Kane’s eyes were restlessly observant, drinking in every detail of the journey and his fellow passengers—thirty-one in all, including himself and Brigid, crammed into the bus-like back of the wagon. Kane had once been a Magistrate for Cobaltville, a type of law-enforcer who followed the baron’s dictates, until he became disillusioned with the regime and embroiled in a conspiracy that had led to his expulsion from the ville. Since then, Kane had hooked up with Cerberus, an organization dedicated to the protection of humankind from outside forces. It was another kind of law enforcement, to be sure, but one predicated on a more noble foundation. It was as a Cerberus exile that Kane had faced rogue gods and deranged aliens—and sometimes both at once—and had traveled across the globe and beyond to protect his fellow man. Right now, that role had brought Kane to the arable farmlands of the north, where he was riding in the back of the scratch-built transport wagon along with his partner, Brigid Baptiste, and twenty-nine other pilgrims, heading for one of the most sacred sites in North America.
Kane knew where he was going, even if he had not visited before. It was a temple, which—in Kane’s experience—boiled down to being another way for someone to control someone else for their own personal gain. He had enforced that system when he had been a Magistrate, enforced the iron will of Baron Cobalt, turning a blind eye to the inequalities and cruelties that that system reinforced. But now the nine barons were gone and their baronies were crumbling, struggling to continue without them, the rot slowly but surely eating them up from within. In time, Kane thought, the whole system would fall by the wayside—and he considered it his job to make sure that what came next wasn’t simply more of