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

It had been Yellowbaby's plan to jump into the Col du Marchairuz, a
pass about seven kilometers away from Mont Tendre, before the search hovers
came swarming. I saw Django disappear into a stand of dead sycamores and
thought he had probably killed himself. I had no time to worry, because the
ground was rushing up at me like a nightmare. I spotted the road and steered
for it but got caught in a gust that swept me across about five meters above
the pavement. I touched on the opposite side; the airfoil was pulling me
toward a huge boulder. I toggled to armor mode just as I hit. Once again the
bell rang, knocking the breath from me and announcing that I had arrived. If I
hadn't been wearing a helmet I would have kissed that chunk of limestone.
I unfastened the quick-release hooks and the airfoil's canopy billowed,
dragged along the ground, and wrapped itself around a tree. I slithered out of
the EV suit and tried to get my bearings at the same time. The Col du
Marchairuz was cool, not much above freezing, and very, very quiet. Although I
was wearing isothermals, the skin on my hands and neck pebbled and I shivered.
The silence of the place was unnerving. I was losing it again, lagged out. I
had been through too damn many environments in one day. I liked to live fast,
race up that adrenaline peak where there was no time to think, just report
what I could see now and to hell with remembering or worrying about what might
happen next. What I needed was to start working again so I could lose myself
in the details. But I was alone and, for the moment, there was nothing to
report. I had dropped out of the sky like a fallen angel; the still landscape
itself seemed to judge me. The mountains did not care about Django's stolen
corporate secrets or the ops-and-snakes story I would produce to give some
jaded telelink drone a Wednesday-night thrill. I had risked my life for some
lousy juice and a chance at the main menu; the cliffs brooded over my reasons.
So very quiet.
"Eyes!" Django dropped from a boulder onto the road and trotted across
to me. "You all right?"
I didn't want him to see how close to the edge I was, so I nodded.
After all, I was the spook journalist; he was just another snake. "You?" There
was a long scratch on his face and his knuckles were bloody.
"Walking. Tangled with a tree. The chute got caught -- had to leave
it."
I nodded again. He stooped to pick up my discarded suit. "Let's lose
this stuff and get going."
I stared at him, thought about breaking it off. I had enough to put
together one hell of a story and I'd had my fill of Django.
"Don't freeze on me now, Eyes." He wadded the suit and jammed it into a
crevice. "If the satellites caught our jump, these mountains are going to be
crawling with ops, from Cognico and the EU." He hurled my helmet over the edge
of the cliff and began to gather up the shrouds of my chute. "We're gone by
then."
I brought the microcam on line again in time to shoot him hiding my
chute. He was right; it wasn't quite time to split up. If EU ops caught me
now, they'd probably confiscate my memory dots and let the lawyers fight it
out; spook journalism was one American export Europe wanted to discourage. I'd
have nothing to sell Jerry Macmillan at Infoline but talking heads and text.
And if private ops got us first ... well, they had their own rules. I had to
stick with Django until we got clear. As soon as I started moving again, I