"Carter, Raphael - The Fortunate Fall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Carter Raphael)

Twenty years of good behavior, sunk by a stereotype. Now I'd get to test the old maxim about Postcop tea. The first time you drink it, they say, you soon forget it--that part I'd already proved. But the second time, the saying goes on, you remember it the rest of your life.
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't make you get out now," I said.
"Because it's too late. They already know we're together. I just saw the bulletin go out."
What are my chances if I kill him and say he tried to carjack me? I asked. No, don't bother, I know the answer. Don't mind me, I'm just struggling against the inevitable.
"I assure you that your reputation will not be damaged as a result of this meeting," he said. "I have made extensive preparations to avoid endangering you. When the day shift clocks out, I will erase the information from their chips before the next shift slots them in, and purge all external records. At six o'clock this evening, you will be as clean as you were yesterday."
"And if he doesn't do it, I will," Keishi said. "I'll power-down their whole network if I have to."
Keishi was wired beyond the Post police, but even so, it didn't seem remotely plausible. And while they both sounded confident, I wasn't sure how much to credit that. The overenhanced often come to believe they can hack their way out of anything. Sooner or later, life proves them all wrong.
"I'm not making this up, Maya. I can do it."
I believe you, I subvoked without conviction.
"The first thing," Voskresenye said, "is to lose any surveillance we may have attracted. Take a right turn up at the light."
"Where are we going?"
"I'll know when we get there."
I wasn't reassured, but saw no reason not to go where he suggested. As I made the turn I said, "Just so I know what I'm being disappeared for, what exactly did you do? Plant a bomb or something?"
"I planted something much more dangerous. An idea. --Here! Turn into this parking lot. --An idea, but it didn't go off. Secondhand explosives; you can't trust them. Park there, next to that gray car."
I pulled in next to a car that was a perfect duplicate of mine, except for being a slightly darker shade of gray. The owner must have parked it indoors. Kruchonykh never sold a gray car, you understand; they just turn that color.
He got out, and though his movements were neither as fast nor as acrobatic as they had been when he scuttled into the car on Nevsky, they still didn't fit with his age. For a moment I wondered if he was a younger man in some sort of make-up. But no, it was more than that. There was something inhuman about the way he moved, about its smoothness--fast precise movements with no diagonals, like a toy robot.
I followed him around to the back of the car and started to ask what he was doing, but he put his finger to his lips and looked into the sky. "There ... and there...Ф he murmured, then said to me: "Stand over to your left a little, and keep talking."
"What sort of idea?"
"Oh, some nonsense about human beings having inalienable rights. Or was it that the Earth is flat? At my age one begins to forget these things."
He had removed my license plate, using a tiny electric screwdriver produced from one of his coat's many pockets. "About a foot to your right, if you please," he said. Then he went to the car beside us, and started switching plates.
"Will that work?" I whispered.
"Speak freely; no one can hear us now. And yes, it should. You're between me and the closest spy satellite; the other one's too far to see much. Back to where you were before, please." He put on the new plate, then moved back to the other car and laid his hands on it. Its dashboard lit up, except for the security section, which remained dark. "All right, friend," he murmured to the car, bending down to press his cheek against its hood, "who do we belong to? Ah, registered to Maria Petrova and Ivan Petrov, a man and a woman... and they're both here. Perfect. That makes everything much easier." He straightened back up and brought one hand to his head. I heard the car's phone begin to dial itself.
On the second ring someone picked up the phone. "Petrova."
"Maria Petrova," he said in a creditable imitation of an early-model Kruchonykh voice, "this is an automated call from your Kruchonykh KL-37. There has been an attempt to steal me. I have already electrocuted the offenders and alerted the appropriate authorities. Please proceed to my vicinity as soon as possible to fill out the police report."
"Bozhe moy--how many were there? Are they alive?"
"The hooligan or hooligans are dead. No further information is available at this time. Thank you for choosing Kruchonykh." The phone went dark. He turned to me and said: "That ought to do it. The promise of carnage rarely fails to bring people running."
"Won't they just call the cops and draw attention?"
"It doesn't matter if they do or not; the cops already know we're here." He touched the car again and its motor started. "The satellites have infrared, so their motor has to be about as warm as ours. The Postcops will figure they started it remotely, if they notice at all. --You were asking about my checkered past."
" 'Conspiracy to overthrow the government'?"
"Oh yes, that. A youthful folly. That was when I thought that liberty in the Fusion was being destroyed by people, and not by impersonal forces. I tried to embarrass a few of those people. But I discovered that in the Historical Nations you will never run out of tyrants. Depose all you want, they'll make more. By the time I realized who my targets should have been, I had become much too old for such antics. 'If youth knew, if age could.' "
"If you don't mind my saying so, you look as though your age can."
"Aesculapius and Hephaestus have been kind to me," he said, "but there are limits."
"He means medicine and technology, the pretentious old bat," Keishi put in, before I could ask.
I was about to ask another question when he said: "Don't look now, but here come the Petrovs, every petty-bourgeois inch of them. Now, the satellite takes pictures at a rate of one every four seconds, so when they're four seconds away from the car--say, when they reach the bumper on that Honda there--get in as fast as you can. Ready?" He adjusted the side mirror as the couple approached. Then at the appointed moment we both jumped in.
"Look," he whispered, pointing to the side mirror. "They're standing by the car and talking. They're us, and we're them. He's even wearing a sweater, so he'll only be a little brighter than me in infrared. We've done it."
Maria Petrova noticed us and rapped at the window. I rolled it down.
"Excuse me, tavarishcha. Did you see anyone near this car?"
"No," I said, "but we heard the alarm call you. It must be on the fritz."
"Those Kruchonykh alarms are crap," Voskresenye said in a crotchety old man's voice. "They'll do that every time. It's a miracle we weren't electrocuted. Just you trade that pile of garbage in on a Stepanova. You mark my words."
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, Sergei." To Maria Petrova I said, "Sergei is an engineer for Stepanova. He gets like this."
She looked back and forth between us, seeing the difference in ages--then decided to smile. "I understand. You should hear Ivan on the evils of Japanese software."
Having affirmed my membership in the international sorority of suffering spouses, I realized, I could now drive away without arousing comment. "Sergei, let's go home and quit bothering these nice people," I said, and to Petrova: "Proshaite, sestra."
As I backed out I heard Ivan say, "But she's driving a Kruchonykh!"
"Of course I am!" I called out the window. "I'm not stupid enough to drive anything my husband designed!"
Voskresenye chuckled as we drove away. "Most impressive. You missed your calling. You should have been an actor."
"I am," I said. "Or at least, I was until today. Are we clean now?"
"Once more for good measure. Stop anywhere along here."
I did, and he switched the license plate again, this time with a small green convertible that he said was between sensors.
"Now we're clean. By the time anyone figures out what happened, we'll be miles away, and they'll be tracking the wrong vehicle."
"And Maria Petrova drinks tea?"