"2 - Idoru" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gibson William - The Bridge Trilogy)

rich mineral names scrolling at will in the menu of peripheral vi- 0


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sion). This city of winged lions and golden horses. This default hour of gray and perpetual dawn.

She could be alone here, or visit with the Music Master.

Her father, phoning from Singapore to wish her a happy birthday, had told her that Hitler, during his first and only visit, had slipped away to range the streets alone, in these same small hours, mad perhaps, and trotting like a dog.

Chia, who had only a vague idea who Hitler might have been, and that mainly from references in songs, understood the urge. The stones of the Piazza flowed beneath her like silk, as she raised a silvered finger and sped into the maze of bridges, water, arches, walls.

She had no idea what this place was meant to mean, the how or why of it, but i~ fit so perfectly into itself and the space it occupied, water and stone slotting faultlessly into the mysterious whole.

The gnarliest piece of software ever, and here came the opening chords of "Positron Premonition."
Clinton Emory Hiliman, twenty-five: hairdresser, sushi chef, music journalist, porno extra, reliable purveyor of proscribed fetal tissue cultures to three of the more endomorphic members of the decidedly meshbacked Dukes of Nuke 'Em, whose "Gulf War Baby" was eighteen with a bullet on the Billboard chart, in heavy rotation on I (heart) America, and had already been the subject of diplomatic protests from several Islamic states.

Kathy Torrance looked as though she might be prepared to be pleased. "And the fetal tissue, Laney?"

"Well," Laney said, putting the 'phones down beside the computer, "I think that might be the good part."

"Why?"

"It has to be Iraqi. They make a point of insisting on that. They won't shoot up any other kind."

"You're hired."

"I am?"

"You must have correlated the calls to Ventura with the parking charges from the garage in the Beverly Center. Although that running gag about 'Gulf War babies' would've been hard to miss."

"Wait a minute," Laney said. "You knew."

"It's the top segment on Wednesday's show." She closed the computer without bothering to turn off Clint Hiliman's detweaked chin. "But now I've had a chance to watch you work, Laney. You're a nat
ural. I could almost believe there might actually be something to 0
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5. Nodal Points
that nodal point bullshit. ome o~ your moves made no logical sense whatever, but I've just wached 3ou hone in, cold, on something it took three experienced researchers a month to excavate. You did it in just under half an hour."

"Some of that was illegal," Laney said. "You're tied into parts of DatAmerican that you aren't supposed to be."

"Do you know what anondisclosure agreement is, Laney?"



Yamazaki looked up fromhis notebook. "Very good," he said, probably to Blackwell. "This i~ very good."

Blackwell shifted his veight, the chair's polycarbon frame creaking faintly in protest. "But he didn't last there, did he?"