"Alex Irvine - Shambhala" - читать интересную книгу автора (Irvine Alexander C)

away in the back of her mind while her body walks calmly along a leafy side street. Sunshine dapples the
sidewalk except where it's covered in frog pixels. Shannon's bones feel oddly magnetized, but she has no
impulse to limp along with any of the main streams of exodus. Neither does she have any particular desire
to know where they're going, or where they think they're going, or whether they have any idea where
they're going. Her mind wanders, but her feet stay on the path to the library, where she has heard Charon
hangs out.
If he exists. One of the things about the Virt is that things don't always exist, and if they do, it's not always
a permanent situation. There's no commitment to permanence here, especially on the part of the native
personae. They flitter in and out of existence like convection shadows in clear water. Charon is alleged to
be a native, but one who has access to meatspace, which would make him remarkable if not unique; one
of the clauses in the contract all of the Squirts signed, back when they had flesh-and-blood hands, enjoins
them to avoid contact with the physical world. Meatspace News is a one-way channel, and if it's cut out,
then something has gone genuinely kaput. Maybe Charon will know what, and maybe--Shannon's
grasping at straws here, but straws are what she has right now--he will be able to help. If he is what the
whispered consensus says he is, which is an illicit conduit to meatspace. There are various theories about
why such a thing is allowed to exist in light of the no-contact clause in all Squirt contracts, but no one
knows for sure. If she is lucky, Shannon thinks, she might find out.

On the keystone over the library's front door is the inscription Oh time thy pyramids. It wasn't there the
last time Shannon visited the library, and when she enters the building she finds that interior is dramatically
different as well. Usually an Avirtar is already waiting at the desk, but today the library is full of
translucent blind men groping among shelves of books that reach up higher than she can see. At the far
end of the room, she sees a door, and is walking toward it before she's consciously decided to do so.
somewhere on earth
The sound of an approaching outboard motor distracts Alvin Kuntz from the enjoyment of his daily
cigarette. He pinches the coal off the cigarette, saving half of it for later, and goes around to the front of
his house, which faces the beach on an island that was erased from world maps shortly after World War
II. He calls it Alvinia, and considers that in view of all he's done for human civilization, he's earned the
distinction of naming a lump of South Pacific sand and coral after himself. The Kuntz Virtual
Rehabilitation Clinic helped create the Virt, pioneered the brain-scanning and personality-modeling work
that led to the Virt, and incubated innumerable advances in nanobiology after the Virt's establishment.
That, Alvin reasons, is more than enough to excuse a little hubris, even though you won't find his name on
any research papers or in any of the standard histories and even though he can't set foot on the North
American or European continents because of certain indiscretions on the part of people who should have
known better.

The downside of occupying an uncharted island is that Alvin's only company is robots of his own design,
so it is with great anticipation that Alvin rounds the corner of his house to see what visitors the day has
brought, and it's with great dismay that he notices the various official insignia bedecking the boat and the
sleeves and hats of its crew. Were he a younger man, he would run even though the island is less than a
mile across at its widest, and only slightly longer. He stays where he is because by the time the flight
impulse winds its way down centenarian nerves to his feet, the boat is already beached and one of its
crew knee-deep in the surf calling Alvin's name.

"Get off my beach!" he shouts. "There's no extradition treaties in Alvinia!"

"We're not here to extradite anyone, Mr. Kuntz," the wet-legged sailor says. "All we need to know is
where you're keeping the bodies."

"What bodies?"