"Peter F. Hamilton - Fallen Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

FALLEN DRAGON


PETER F. HAMILTON
 ASPECT┬о
WARNER BOOKS
An AOL Time Warner Company This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living
or dead, is coincidental.

WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright ┬й 2002 by Peter F. Hamilton All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in
writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages
in a review.

Cover design by Don Puckey
Cover illustration by Jim Burns
Aspect┬о name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.
Warner Books, Inc.
1271 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Visit our Web site at www. twbookmark. com An AOL Time Warner
Company Printed in the United States of America Originally published in
hardcover by Warner Books. First Paperback Printing: March 2003
10 987654321
For Kate, who said yes
 CHAPTER ONE
TIME WAS WHEN THE BAR WOULD HAVE WELCOMED A MAN FROM Zantiu-Braun's
strategic security division, given him his first beer on the house and listened with
keen admiration to his stories of life as it was lived oh so differently out among
the new colony planets. But then that could be said of anywhere on Earth
halfway through the twenty-fourth century. In the public conscience, the
glamour of interstellar expansion was fading like the enchantment of an aging
actress.
As with most things in the universe, it was all the fault of money.
The bar lacked money. Lawrence Newton could see that as soon as he walked
in. It hadn't been refurbished in decades. A long wooden room with thick rafters
holding up the corrugated carbon-sheet roof, a counter running its length, dull
neon adverts for extinct brands of beers and ice creams on the wall behind. Big
rotary fans that had survived a couple of centuries past their warranty date
turned above him, primitive electric motors buzzing as they stirred the muggy
air.
This was the way of things in Kuranda. Sitting high in the rocky tablelands
above Cairns, it had enjoyed long profitable years as one of Queensland's top
tourist-trap towns. Sweating, sunburned Europeans and Japanese had made
their way up over the rain forest on the skycable, marveling at the lush
vegetation before traipsing round the curio shops and restaurant bars that made