"Asimov, Isaac - Robot Mystery - Chimera" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

Faces appeared at doorways, lingered for a few seconds, then retreated.
Coren estimated about a thousand people lived in this precariously overbuilt shantytown, lived quite illegally and with little fear of eviction, but with the constant possibility of having the entire makeshift construct tumble down on them. Many of the residents worked legitimate jobs that paid too little to afford them a decent domicile and do whatever else they found more important --sending children to better schools, subscriptions to expensive entertainments, paying off a debt, or saving for the chance to emigrate--but just as many worked on the edge of legality: dealers in stolen data or controlled substances, informants, runners, small credit fences, rented muscle. Others simply had nowhere else to go and had fallen here, fortunate to at least have a place to sleep and a source for food.
Coren took out his palm monitor and made his way through the maze of passageways, up a ladder, and down a short gangway to an unlit doorway. The signal from the smear he had deposited on Jeta the second time they met was weaker, but still traceable. The self-replicating vonoomans exhausted themselves after a few days and decayed unrecoverably. He ran the sensor up and down a scale to test it. Satisfied that Jeta Fromm had at least stayed here for more than an hour, giving his tiny tracers a chance to proliferate in the environment, he pocketed the monitor. He palmed a flash and switched it on as he kicked in the flimsy plastic door and stepped through.
In the harsh blue-white illumination, the cubicle leapt into sharp relief. A cot stretched against the wall to his left, a sleeping bag and extra blankets wadded up at the head. A makeshift desk stood along the back wall, cluttered with objects that formed an indecipherable tangle. Along the wall to the right was a trunk, the lid open, the contents spilling over the edge--clothing, from the look of it.
Immediately to the right Coren found a lamp propped on a three-legged table. He switched it on and turned off his own light.
Vacant. He closed the door behind him.
He studied the room carefully. Jeta Fromm had struck him as a fastidious person, neat and methodical. This place did not. He sat down on the edge of the cot.
Disks, small pieces of paper, items of clothing, scraps of unidentifiable detritus littered the floor. A chair lay on its side to the left of the desk. The cot itself was angled away from the wall.
It appeared to Coren that she--or someone--had left in a hurry, possibly in a panic. Jeta peddled data--rumor, software, illicit downloads, even documented fact when she sold material to the newsnets as a stringer--so any of a number of deals could cause her to run.
She had been very professional when he met her, but it seemed to him now that there had been an undercurrent of desperation. She managed it well and he had been in a hurry, so he had neglected to pay it enough attention.
Coren stepped up to the desk. The clutter consisted mainly of components from old, salvaged readers, scanners, and bits of datum units. He saw a control panel from a commline. Tools lay mixed with the debris. Two bare spaces suggested removed equipment. He guessed, given her range of services, that she owned a pathburner, a very expensive microcircuitry cutter. Probably a very good decryption datum. The cost of those two pieces would be more than his own yearly salary.
What he saw here convinced Coren that Jeta was on the run. Someone--maybe the same someone who had rolled him in Petrabor--had come looking for her. She had duly disappeared.
He knelt down and shuffled through the papers and disks on the floor. The disks were labeled by numbers. He could go through them, but he doubted she would have left anything behind worth the trouble.
The papers mostly contained scribbled comm codes, cryptic notes--" Jam on B-stras, 3s" or "Cram Seef for Rudo, level 12"--and a couple of doodles. One caught his eye that said "B meet at seven's place, 2shift" followed by a comm code. He slipped it into his pocket and stood.
He turned off the light and stepped outside.
To his left he glimpsed someone watching him from a doorway. The door slammed shut. Coren reached the cubicle in three long strides and shouldered his way in.
In the pale light he saw a small man shoving himself in the comer behind a large chest of drawers. Coren shut the door and stepped closer.
"I didn't! Stop! I didn't!" the man cried.
"You know Jeta?" Coren demanded. "She ask you to watch her place?"
"I don't--nothing to say, gato--please--"
"Don't 'gato' me, shit. Dump it now. You're a friend of Jeta's?"
He nodded once. He was not quite as small as he at first seemed, but the clothes he wore were too big and his head was long and shaved bald. His sleeves half-covered his hands.
"You 're watching for her, right? Who came to visit before me? Who's looking for her?"
The man shook his head a little too quickly. "Don't know."
"Don't know what? Who, if, when?"
"Never saw them before."
"Them? Two? More?"
"Two. Man and a woman."
"The man," Coren said. "Short, stout, yellow skin?"
A scowl flashed across his face. "No, it was--I don't know. Leave me alone."
Coren resisted the urge to grab the smaller man. Strong-arming would do no good, but he wondered just how far subtlety would get him.
"Listen, gato," he said gently, "Jeta's in trouble. If I don't find her first she'll be dead. Savvy? Now, who came?"
"Never--I--" The man swallowed loudly and closed his eyes. "Dead?" he whispered.
"Very dead. "
The man nodded weakly. "She--two days ago, third shift, she says time to go, she's sorry. Be back in a few days for her jumble--"
"Her what?"
"Jumble--her stuff--"
"All right, go on."
"Asks me just to spot who comes looking. Like you guessed. "
"And?"
"Three hours later this tall gato, long coat, tosses her cube. Didn't see me. Stayed in her place maybe twenty minutes."
"Tall. Anything else?"
"Dark skin, like he's seen sun or something. Didn't blink."
"Didn't blink...his eyes?"
"What else you got that blinks?"
"Did he talk to you?"
"No," the man said indignantly. "I said he didn't see me."
"You said a woman?"
"Came yesterday. Looked around Jeta's cube, stayed maybe an hour, then left. "
"What did she look like?"