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

Six hours later everyone held their breath as New York started trading. Wall Street dived straight into the
gold market. And Nigel found out the true meaning of pandemonium.

After a terrible day he washed up at The Swan, hoping to find Miranda there. She wasn't. But a
fourteen-year-old girl wanted to sell him an emax.

"A what?"

Freckles crinkled against spots as she smiled. "An energy matrix, what they used to call a battery." She
showed him a small fat cylinder: black, glossy, seamless. "The outside casing is a solar collector, see?
Ninety-five per cent conversion efficiency. You just have to leave it in the sun and it'll recharge in a
couple of hours."

Ten quid each. He bought six to power his ghetto blaster.

***

Next morning the public's thirst for gold had increased. The Chancellor appeared on the lunchtime news
to try to calm people, assuring them that the Bank of England had enough reserves to cope with the
unexpected consumer-led boom, and no restrictions were even being contemplated. The interviewer's
questions about the economy starting to downturn in such a climate were brusquely dismissed as
scaremongering.

Nigel couldn't concentrate that afternoon, despite all the floor supervisor's screams and threats to level
their investments. He spent the time accessing share prices for electronics companies. What he found was
more unsettling than any of the five-million-quid skeletons he had rattling round his accounts. Miranda
had been right: the prices were slowly starting to drop. Worse, it was a global picture. Other analysts
would be plotting the trend, the whole electronics section of the market would crash. If he just knew
which name made afto-aspro he could pump millions into their stock and ride the storm's lightning.

Before he left work that evening a rumour swept the floor that cashpoint machines all over town had
malfunctioned, dishing out three thousand pound windfalls to hundreds of lucky punters. The banks were
closing down their hole-in-the-wall outlets until the electronics could be checked.

He started the drive home. The traffic all around him shone like a river of prismatic sunlight. Everyone,
these days, gleamed.

Halfway to Docklands he saw three ten-year-old girls standing beside a building society's cashpoint. One
of them had a silver card just like the one in Miranda's bag, which she shoved into the slot. Money
started gushing out. The girls squealed excitedly, scooping it up.

Nigel parked and walked, soaking up the new fizz loose on the block. A knot of five boys loitered ahead
of him. He had no doubt that the one with his back to him was an afto-aspro peddler. It was the
clothesтАФbright, new, expensive. There was a glint of gold necklace chains exchanged for a slimline afto-
aspro box. The peddler shook hands and departed; not getting three paces before more people
buttonholed him.

Each of the boys he left behind registered an awed, vaguely guilty expression as they stared at their new
afto-aspro box. Nigel followed them without a qualm.