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

what I saw stopped me at the threshold; instinctively I brought the microcam
on line. I heard two warning beeps and then a whispery crunch from the
goggles' system unit. The status light went from green to red to blank.
I asked the fact checker what had happened. No answer. "Express
permission," said the man who sat waiting for us, "as you were warned."
"But my files!"
"No memory has been compromised; you have merely lost the capacity to
record. Come in anyway, come in. Just in time to see it again -- been
rerunning all afternoon." He laughed and nodded at the flatscreen propped
against a bowl of raw vegetables on an enormous walnut table. "Oh, God! It is
a fearful thing to see the human soul take wing."
Django picked it up suspiciously. I stood on tiptoes and peeked over
his shoulder. The thirty-centimeter screen did not do the wing justice and the
overhead satellite view robbed the crash of much of its visual drama. Still,
the fireball that bloomed on Mont Tendre was dazzling. Django whooped at the
sight. The fireball was replaced by a head talking in High German and then
close-ups of the crash site. What was left of the wing wouldn't have filled a
picnic basket.
"What's he saying?" Django thrust the flatscreen at our host.
"That there has not been a crash like this since '15. Which makes you
famous, whoever you are." Our host shrugged. "He goes on to say that you're
probably dead. But enough. Ich scheisse ihn an."
The banqueting hall was finished in wood and stone. The ceiling was a
single barrel vault, magnificently embellished. Its centerpiece was the table,
some ten meters long and supported by a series of heavy Gothic trestles.
Around this table was arranged a collection of wheelchairs. Two were antiques:
a crude pine seat mounted on iron-rimmed wagon wheels and a hooded Bath chair.
Others were failed experiments, like the ill-fated air cushion chair from the
turn of the century and a low-slung cousin of the new aerodynamic bicycles.
There were powered and push models, an ultralightweight sports chair and a
bulky mobile life-support system. They came in colors; there was even one with
fur.
"So the ops drink we're dead?" Django put the flatscreen back on the
table.
"Possibly." Our host frowned. "Depends when the satellites began to
track you and what they saw. Have to wait until the Turks kick the door in to
find out for sure. Until then call it a clean escape and welcome to Chillon
prison." He backed away from the table; the leather seat creaked slightly as
his wheelchair rolled over the uneven floor toward Django. "Francois
Bonivard." With some difficulty he raised his good hand in greeting.
"I'm Django." He grasped Bonivard's hand and pumped it once. "Now that
we're pals, Frank, get rid of your goddamned robots before I needle them."
Bonivard winced as Django released his hand. "Id, Ego, macht eure
Runden," he said. The wiseguys bounced obediently from the banqueting hall.
Francois de Bonivard, sixteenth-century Swiss patriot, was the hero of
Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon." Reluctantly, I stepped forward to meet my
host.
"Oh, right." Django settled gingerly into one of the wheelchairs at the
table. "Maybe I forgot to mention Eyes. Say, what do you do for drugs around
here anyway? I've eaten a fistful of forwards already today; I'm ready to poke