"Peter F. Hamilton - A Second Chance At Eden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

"Sure thing." After the old boy had seen it, maybe he'd scoot. You can't really shunt
someone out of their own turf.
We clustered round the life-support pod, except for the girl. Wes turned down the
opacity, and Dicko's face hardened into grim appreciation, a corpse grin. It chilled me down.
Khanivore is close on three metres tall, roughly hominoid in that it has two trunklike
legs and a barrel torso, albeit encased in a black segmented exoskeleton. After that, things
get a little out of kilter. The top of the torso sprouts five armoured tentacles, two of them
ending in bone-blade pincers. They were all curled up to fit in the pod like a nest of sleeping
boa constrictors. There was a thick twenty-centimetre prehensile neck supporting a
nightmare head sculpted from bone that was polished down to a black-chrome gleam. The
front was a shark-snout jaw with a double row of teeth, while the main dome was inset with
deep creases and craters to protect sensor organs.
Dicko reached out and touched the surface of the pod. "Excellent," he whispered, then
added casually: "I want you to take a dive."
There was a moment of dark silence.
"Do what?" Karran squeaked.
Dicko beamed his dead smile straight at her. "A dive. You'll be well paid, double the
winning purse, ten thousand CUs. Plus whatever side bets you care to place. That should go a
long way to easing the financial strain on an amateur team like yourselves. We can even
discuss some future dates."
"Fuck off!"
"And that's from all of us," Jacob spat. "You screwed up, Dicko. We're pros, man, real
pros. We believe in beastie-baiting, it's ours. We were there at the start, and we're not letting
shits like you fuck it over for a quick profit. Word gets out about rigged bouts and we all
lose, even you."
He was smooth, I'll give him that, his cocoon of urbanity never flickering. "You're not
thinking, young man. To keep on Baiting you must have money. Especially in the future.
Large commercial concerns are starting to notice this sport of yours, it will soon be turning
professional with official leagues and governing bodies. With the right kind of support a
team of your undeniable quality can last until you reach retirement age. Even a beast which
never loses requires a complete rebuild every nine months, not to mention the continual
refinements you have to stitch in. Baiting is an expensive business, and about to become
more so. And business it now is, not some funfair ride. At the moment you are naive
amateurs who happen to have hit a winning streak. Do not delude yourselves; one day you are
going to lose. You need a secure income to tide you over the lean times while you design and
test a new beast.
"This is what I am offering you, the first step towards responsibility. Fighters and
promoters feed each other. We always have done, right back to the days of the Roman
gladiators. And we always will do. There is nothing dishonest in this. Tonight, the fans will
see the tremendous fight they paid for, because Khanivore could never lose easily. Then they
will return to watch you again, screaming for victory, ecstatic when you win again. Struggle,
heartache, and triumph, that is what demands their attention, what keeps any sport alive.
Believe me, I know crowds far better than you ever can; they have been my life's study."
"So is money," Ivrina said quietly. She'd crossed her arms over her chest, staring at him
contemptuously. "Don't give us any more of this bullshit about doing us a favour. You run the
book in this part of town, you and a few others. A tight, friendly little group who've got it all
locked down. That's the way it is, that's the way it's always been. I'll tell you what's really
happened tonight. Every punter has laid down their wad on Sonnie's Predators, the dead cert
faves. So you and the boys did a few sums of your own, and worked out how you can profit
most from that. Slip us the ten grand for a fall, and you'll walk off with the mega-profit."