"Greg Egan - Quarantine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

'What?'

'Do you have many patients here with Bubble Fever?' She laughs and shakes her head. 'Not one. Bubble Fever has
gone right out of fashion.'

Because I am in business, and because I might - in theory - give credit, there's a certain amount I can find out about
anyone, with no effort at all.

10

Martha Andrews is thirty-nine years old, and works as a systems analyst for WestRail. She is divorced, with custody
of her two sons. She has an average income and average debts, and forty-two per cent equity in a cheap two-bedroom
flat. She's been paying the Hilgemann out of a trust fund left by her parents; her father died three years ago, her
mother the year after. She is not worth extorting.

At this stage, the most plausible hypothesis seems to be one of mistaken identity; it doesn't fit well with the
professionalism of the kidnapping, but nobody's perfect. What I need, to take the idea any further, is a list of the
Hilgemann's patients. Details of the staff might also come in handy.

I call my usual hacking service.

The ringing tone seems to reverberate deep within my skull. There's no doubt that NeuroComm's product
psychologists chose these bizarre acoustics to give a strong impression of privacy, but I'm not impressed; it just
makes me feel claustrophobic. At the same time, my external vision fades to black-and-white - supposedly to lessen the
distraction, but in fact it's just one more tedious gimmick.

Bella answers on the fourth ring, as always. Her face seems to hover about a metre away, vivid against reality's greys,
vanishing at the neck as if revealed by some magical spotlight. She smiles coolly. 'Andrew, it's good to see you. What
can I do for you?' 'Andrew' is the name I use for one of my CypherClerk masks. Her own synthetic human visage
might also be nothing but a mask, repeating word for word the speech intentions of an actual person -or it might be a
pure artifact, the interface to anything from a glorified answering machine to a system that actually does ninety-nine
per cent of the hacking itself. I really don't care who or what Bella is; she/he/it/they get results, and that's all that
matters to me.

'The Hilgemann Institute, Perth branch. I want all their patient records, and all their staff records.'

'Back how far?'

11

'Well. . . thirty years, if it's on line. If the old stuff is archived, and it's going to cost a fortune to get your hands on it,
forget it.'

She nods. 'Two thousand dollars.'

I know better than to try to haggle. 'Fine.'

'Call back in four hours. Your password is "paradigm".'

As the room regains its normal hues, it strikes me that two thousand dollars would be a lot of money to Martha