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

Coren hurried down the steps.
On the way back to the tube station, Coren stopped at a public comm and punched in the code he had found. The screen flashed DISCONNECTED SOURCE. He studied the note for a time, trying to decide if it would be worth his while to try to find this Seven. In the end, he fed the paper into a recycler. No time to be as thorough as he wanted. He tapped in the code for the Auroran embassy and began making his way through the maze of connections to find the person he needed to speak to.

Third shift was just beginning in Petrabor Sector. Coren's timing was close, arriving at the warehouse just ahead of the crew.
He stood across from their entrance and this time they noticed him as they filed in by groups of twos and threes. He no longer wore the tattered leftovers of a warren ghost but the fine suit of someone in authority--an inspector or manager or perhaps a cop. As they saw him their friendly chatter died away, replaced by suspicion and silence.
Coren had about half an hour before he needed to catch a semiballistic to D.C. He studied the faces that passed before him, matching them to his memory, but the sixteenth crewman failed to appear. No surprise.
The foreman emerged from the employee access and came toward him. He was a short man, middle-aged and just beginning to lose the firm lines of a body made powerful during time working the bays instead of just supervising others.
"Can I help you?" he asked, stopping a meter away.
Coren held up his ID, which contained the emblem identifying him as a licensed independent security investigator. The foreman almost took a step closer to examine it, but Coren shoved it back into his pocket.
"Last night," Coren said, "you took your crew out during on-duty time. A place called Dimilio's?"
The foreman's eyes became wary. "What about it?"
Coren shook his head sorrowfully. "That's not contract."
"The Guild send you? Management?"
"What do you think would've happened if the routers had glitched with no one there to shut it down?"
"Routers never glitch!"
"They do if they're hacked."
Now the wariness turned to fear. "Hacked..." He swallowed. "You're talking about--"
"I'm not talking about anything yet. I'm asking. Why did you think it would all right to walk out midshift, en masse like that, for a few drinks?"
The foreman scowled at him. "I don't have to talk to you."
Coren nodded agreeably. "That's right, you don't. But if that's what you decide to do, the next people you talk to will be ITE inspectors. They don't give a damn about contract protections. "
The foreman took a tentative step closer. "Look--it was Oril's birthday. Not yesterday, but the day before, but there wasn't time then to do anything. Busy shift. Things slowed down yesterday, there were a couple of windows, we figured, what's an hour or two? We've never had a problem--"
Coren sighed dramatically. "Contract says someone has to be on duty--"
"There was! We left the sub here. He didn't know Oril anyway, no loss."
"The sub. I didn't see any sub listed--"
The foreman looked pained for a second. "Farom was out, he's been having trouble with his kid. He's already past his allotment for personal time and sick days--any more and he gets written up. We paid the sub out of our own pocket to come in for him so Farom wouldn't get the reprimand."
"I need the sub's name."
"I'm telling you, Farom's a good worker--"
"The sub's name." Coren leaned closer and softened his voice. "If I can keep this off the record I will--it'll save me a lot of trouble. I don't need the extra datawork. I just have to verify that you didn't leave your shift unattended. Word is that management has some losses to explain to shareholders. You know how that is. Now there was a glitch in the logs for the time you were all toasting Oril's good health. If it was operator error, then we can correct it on our end and leave you alone." Coren reached out then and grabbed hold of the foreman's coverall. "But you pull that kind of shit again, I'll have your ass in front of management and the Guild conciliators. Understand?"
"Yuri Pocivil," the foreman said quickly. "He's normally Second Shift at the Number Four yard. He had personal time."
"How did you come to call him?"
"We used him before."
"Covering for Farom?"
The foreman swallowed. "As a matter of fact, yeah."
Coren released him. "Yuri Pocivil. I'm going to have a talk with him. He explains the glitch to my satisfaction, you won't see me again. "
"We've never had any problems with him before."
"Happens when you step out of contract. Go back to work."
Shaken, the foreman almost bowed as he backed away. He'd recovered his composure by the time he reached the entrance. He gave Coren a last look--to which Coren returned a reassuring nod--then disappeared inside the warehouse.

Yuri Pocivil had failed to report to work that day and his apartment was vacant. Coren was not surprised, but he was disappointed. It would have been simpler had he found him. Pocivil was a more direct line to whoever was running the operation.
He made his way to the station, mulling over his next move. The routing had been modified in Baltimor. That, at least, was convenient to his next stop.


FOUR

D
erec Avery watched the screens with mild interest. The central view was a complex collection of concentric, overlapping rings. Where some of the lines crossed, pockets formed containing patternless amalgams of small shapes, like froth or dried, cracked mud, or a cloud of midges. The right-hand screen showed a similar view but without the pockets. The left showed only chaos.
As he watched, the rings on the central screen expanded and shrank minutely, as if jockeying for position in a crowded container, occasionally sending waves through one or more of the broken pockets. One pocket suddenly dissolved, quickly forming its own node and growing a set of rings. On the opposite side another pocket, this one filled with what appeared to be different-sized pebbles, wavered on the brink of dissolution. The pocket changed shape, narrowing, nearly splitting in two, then reinflating. Abruptly, it solidified, the pebbles merging to form a smooth surface. Then the wall burst and pebbles spilled across the orderly waves of circles, rupturing them, forming new pockets of disorder, and within seconds the screen lost all sign of pattern.
"Disappointing," said a calm, genderless alto voice.
"What happened, Thales?" Derec asked, though he already knew.
"I lost a primary anchor in the matrix," replied his office's Resident Intelligence. "When it went, it caused a cascade."