"Cassutt, Michael - More Adventures On Other Planets" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cassutt Michael)

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Mission control for J2E2 is in a crumbling three-story structure in the bad part of La Jolla, south of the Cove and bordering on the aptly-named Mission Beach. The building formerly housed an Internet service provider. The ISP had purchased and remodelled the place in 1998, hoping for business from the San Diego and North County high-tech communities, which were then wallowing in an unprecedented economic boom.
And did so for the better part of a decade, until a series of mergers closed the node. Then the AGC Corporation, newly formed by three researchers from UC-SD, just over the hill in La Jolla proper, leased the building for tests of their first real-time Superluminal Light Pulse Propogation/Emulation Regime (usually known as SLIPPER) on the 2012 asteroid Neva flyby. What the hell: the facility was already wired for fiber-optic and extreme bandwith, and was configured for electrical and thermal support of AGC's ten-petaflop computer.

That was eighteen years and five interplanetary missions ago, and while the guts of what is now the J2E2 mission control have continued to evolve, the exterior has been left alone. Which presents the staff with a problem. The ISP operation had never employed more than a dozen people, while the AGC SLIPPER project has thirty or more in the building at all times.

The parking lot is simply inadequate, and with public transport in this part of La Jolla (remember, this is California) limited to the occasional bus, with working hours staggered, with rents and home prices in La Jolla among the highest in the country Е well, disputes are inevitable.

Earl Tolan pulls his battered Chevy pickup into the gated lot and drives up to space eleven, only to find a brand-new Volvo already there.

Tolan is fifty-nine, a senior operator on the J2E2 project after moving to AGC from Lockheed Martin, where he led teams through good times and bad for twenty years. He is not one to lose his temper without reason.

But today he happens to be returning to work after a what should have been a quick visit to the doctor, a checkup which wound up taking four hours and has left him in a bad mood. So the site of this impudent little Volvo taking up his space launches him into a state of only theoretically controlled fury.

He squeals the truck around so that its tailgate backs up to the Volvo. This is a bit of a trick, given the confined space. Tolan has to drive up and over a curb and sidewalk median just to get into position.

Once on station, as ops guys are fond of saying, he drops the tailgate, hauls out a length of chain and a hook he usually uses for attaching the smaller of his two boats to a trailer, wedges the hook in the Volvo's rear bumper, and loops the chain around his trailer hitch.

Then he gets into the truck, puts it in low, and hauls the Volvo out of his space, a maneuver which takes him up and onto the sidewalk and into the driveway beyond. The Volvo, its gear in park and its brake set, makes a screeching sound with its tires, followed by an ominous undercarriage scraping, before fetching up onto the sidewalk median.

Where Tolan leaves it.

Wallowing in momentary self-satisfaction, he pulls around into his space. He is still quite angry, in fact, when he emerges from the truck and heads for the building entrance, where he brushes shoulders with a woman going the other way.

Had his mood been anything less than ultraviolet anger and disgust, Tolan would certainly have managed to sidestep the charging woman while simultaneously noting her looks. Which, allowing for a certain air of growing confusion, are barely worth noting: she is a little over five feet, but adding stature with heeled sandals. A pair of gray slacks suggest muscular legs, and a vest worn over a J2E2 polo shirt does nothing to conceal the solidity within. Her hair is shoulder-length, dark, with a few lighter streaks, appropriate to her age, which is fiftyish. He thinks the eyes are green, but needs a closer look.

Not that he's inclined to give one. Twice-divorced, his sexual relationships are generally with women who would register as more attractive than this one on any visual scale.

What actually gets Tolan's attention is this woman's voice, which has what used to be called (in the days when people still consumed both) a whiskey and cigarette tone, tinged with some kind of Euro accent. Or perhaps it is the words she uses: "I'm gonna kill the son of a bitch who did this." Meaning haul her Volvo onto the median.

The woman calmly walks up to the vehicle, which still quivers in the aftermath of its relocation. She folds her arms, smiles with what could have been a touch of amusement.

Tolan can still make a clean escape, though he knows it won't be long before someone connects the evidenciary dots between Tolan's parking space, the skid marks from it to the Volvo's resting place. Besides, he is curious about the color of those eyesЧso curious he forgets his anger over the momentary theft of a parking place, and his frustration over two hours of unwarranted medical tests.

"I'm the son of a bitch," Tolan said.

She looks at him. Yes, green, with a charming set of smile lines. "Aren't you old enough to know better?"

This strikes Tolan as unfair, given that he is staring at sixty on his next birthday and has just had a medical experience all-too-appropriate for that age. "Apparently not."

To her great credit, she laughs. "I assume this was your space." He nods. "Well, I'm so new I don't have an assigned one. And the guard did tell me you weren't likely to return today."

"Surprises all around." He holds out his hand. "Earl Tolan."

"Rebecca Marceau."

"I think we've met before."