"James Patrick Kelly - The Prisoner of Chillon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

but that was about the same as suicide. Ditto for taking off on my own.
Without Infoline's help, I'd be lucky to last a week before the ops caught me.
Especially now that the military was involved. I could throw in with Django
except that two seconds after I told him that I'd let a satellite get a fix on
us he'd probably be barbecuing my pancreas with his penlight. And if I didn't
tell him I might cripple whatever chances we'd have of getting away. Maybe
Bonivard would be more sympathetic -- but then again, why should he be? Yeah,
sleep. Perchance to dream. At least I was too busy being scared to indulge in
self-loathing.
By the time the sun began to peer through my window I felt as fuzzy as
a peach and not quite as smart. But I had a plan -- one that would require
equal parts luck and sheer gall. I was going to trust that plug-sucking
Macmillan to keep his mouth shut and to delete all my records from Infoline's
files. For the next few days I'd pretend I was still playing by the rules of
spook journalism. I'd try to get a better fix on Bonivard. I hoped that when
the time came for Django to leave I'd know what to do. All I was certain of
that bleary morning was that I was hungry and in more trouble than I knew how
to handle.
I staggered back toward the banqueting hall, hoping to find Bonivard or
one of the wiseguys or at least the bowl of veggies. As I passed a closed door
I heard a scratchy recording of saxophones honking. Jazz. Django. I didn't
stop.
Bonivard was sitting alone at the great table, l tried to read him to
see if his security equipment had picked up my burst to Infoline, but the
man's face was a mask. Someone had refilled the bowl in the middle of the
table.
"Morning." I helped myself to a raw carrot that was astonishingly good.
A crisp sweetness, the clean, spicy fragrance of loam. Maybe I'd been eating
synthetic too long. "Hey, this isn't bad."
Bonivard nodded. "My own. I grow everything."
"That so?" He didn't look strong enough to pull a carrot from the bowl,
much less out of a garden. "Where?"
"In darkness found a dwelling place." His eyes glittered as I took a
handful of cherry tomatoes. "You'd like to see?"
"Sure." Although the tomatoes were even better than the carrot, I was
no vegetarian. "You wouldn't have any sausage bushes, would you?"
I laughed; he didn't. "I'd settle for an egg."
I saw him working the keypad on the arm of the wheelchair. I guess I
thought he was calling the wiseguys. Or something. Whatever I expected, it was
not the thing that answered his summons.
The spider walked on four singing, mechanical legs; it was a meter and
a half tall. Its arms sang too as the servomotors that powered the joints
changed pitch; it sounded like an ant colony playing bagpipes. It clumped into
the room with a herky-jerky gait, although the bowl of its abdomen remained
perfectly level. Each of its legs could move with five degrees of freedom;
they ended in disk-shaped feet. One of its arms was obviously intended for
heavy-duty work, since it ended in a large claw gripper; the other, smaller
arm had a beautifully articulated four-digit hand that was a masterpiece of
microengineering. There was a ring of sensors around the bottom of its belly.
It stopped in front of Bonivard's chair; he wheeled to face it. The strong arm