"Peter F. Hamilton - The White Stuff" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

about people who loitered.
***

Wednesday saw the redhead in a black one-piece cycling uniform. Nigel couldn't understand how she'd
got into it, the fabric was already stretched to its limit.

Her knowing grin was becoming a little too familiar.
"Have you ever heard of the term 'market saturation'?" he asked before she made her pitch.

She stuck her tongue out, awesomely childlike. "Nah. Have you ever heard of an encryption-buster?"
Resting in her palm was a matte-black box the size of a blockbuster paperback. There was a small
keyboard on top. "Unkink everything the satellites beam down: Disney through to Movie Channel, Hot
Dutch, the works, no smart card required. You'll never cop for a subscription charge again."

"Very nice. Where did you get it?"

"Bloke in a pub."

Acquisitive lust began to gnaw. The cost of a decoder card for his Globecast system was criminal. "How
much?" It seemed to be the one consistent phrase he spoke to her.

"Fifty for cash."

"Sold. Come and have a drink with me."

She looked over her shoulder and thought for a moment. "Sure."

***

Nigel lived alone in his Docklands condominium. There were plenty of trees lining the empty streets, and
no delinquents since the entire area was security-ringed and patrolled. Sometimes the only movement in
the whole neighbourhood would be that of a scrap of newspaper blowing down the achingly new
concrete walkways.

He told himself he still enjoyed the single life. He had enough friends in the same situation to make a cosy
self- reinforcing group when they spent their weekend nights on the town. Jannice had been his last
permanent attachment, though the relationship had broken down on a dispute over language.

"Please don't refer to me as your 'partner' or your 'girlfriend.' It's insulting and demeaning."

"So what are you, then?"

"Nothing which implies a contract."

I'm being outmoded before I'm thirty, Nigel had thought at the time. Jannice was four months ago.
There had been other girls since, one night stands picked up while clubbing, a friend's younger sister. But
his job on the trading floor was secure, which in itself was a bonus these days. The City and the new
government were still eying each other wearily across the political divide; but apart from a little
ideologically symbolic blood-letting among the fat cats of the utilities in the first six months after the
election, there had been no incursions, no major campaigns led by reforming chancellors. The sheer