"Gibson, William - Johnny Mnemonic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gibson William)

something of theirs that belonged to someone else. Ralfi, of course,
could use the code phrase to throw me into idiot savant, and I'd spill
their hot program without remembering a single quarter tone. For a fence
like Ralfi, that would ordinarity have been enough. But not for the
Yakuza. The Yakuza would know about Squids, for one thing, and they
wouldn't want to worry about one lifting those dim and permanent traces
of their program out of my head. I didn't know very much about Squids,
but I'd heard stories, and I made it a point never to repeat them to my
clients. No, the Yakuza wouldn't like that; it looked too much like
envidence. They hadn't got where they were by leaving evidence around.
Or alive.
Lewis was grinning. I think he was visualizing a point just behind my
forehead and imagining how he could get there the hard way.
'Hey,' said a low voice, feminine, from somewhere behind my right
shoulder, 'you cowboys sure aren't having too lively a time.'
'Pack it, bitch,' Lewis said, his tanned face very still. Ralfi looked
blank.
'Lighten up. You want to buy some good free base?' She pulled up a chair
and quickly sat before either of them could stop her. She was barely
inside my fixed field of vision, a thin girl with mirrored glasses, her
dark hair cut in a rough shag. She wore black leather, open over a T-
shirt slashed diagonally with stripes of red and black. 'Eight thou a
gram weirht.'
Lewis snorted his exasperation and tried to slap her out of the chair.
Somehow he didn't quite connect, and her hand came up and seemed to
brush his wrist as it passed. Bright blood sprayed the table. He was
clutching his wrist white-knuckle tight, blood tricklng from between his
fingers.
But hadn't her hand been empty?
He was going to need a tendon stapler. He stood up carefully, without
bothering to push his chair back. The chair toppled backward, and he
stepped out of of my line of sight without a word.
'He better get a medic to look at that,' she said. 'That's a nasty cut.'
'You have no idea,' said Ralfi, suddenly sounding very tired, 'the
depths of shit you have just gotten yourself into.'
'No kidding? Myster. I get real excited by mysteries. Like why your
friends here's do quiet. Frozen, like. Or what this thing here is for,'
and she held up the little control unit that she'd somehow taken from
Lewis. Ralfi looked ill.
'You, ah, want maybe a quarter-million to give me that and take a walk?'
A fat hand came up to stroke his pale, lean face nervously.
'What I want,' she said, snapping her fingers so that the unit spun and
glitterd, 'is work. A job. Your boy hurt his wrist. But a quarter'll do
for a retainer.'
Ralfi let his breath out explosively and began to laugh, exposing teeth
that hadn't been kept up to the Chriatian White standard. The she turned
the disruptor off.
'Two million,' I said.
'My kind of man,' she said, and laughed. 'What's in the bag?'
'A shotgun.'