"Crawford Killian - The Empire of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Killian Crawford)

"Seventy-second floor, please. Apartment 72006."

"Yes, sir!" The porter was impressed. All apartments above the seventieth floor
were reserved for top Agency staff. Pierce tipped the porter and started down the
long platform to the escalators.

As he took his fifth step, time seemed to stop. Pierce's perceptions heightened
and intensified, as if he had Just undergone some impossible quintupling of
sensory-input synthesis. He could pick out individual conversations amid the
gabble and shuffle of a hundred people, but everyone was speaking so slowly
that their words made no sense. A dozen different scents swirled around him.
Pierce noted that exactly nine small tiles were missing from the abstract mosaic
that covered the tunnel walls. He was aware of the temperature difference
between his ankles and his face, and estimated it correctly at 2┬░C. The


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Crawford%20Killian%20-%20The%20Empire%20of%20Time.html (2 of 234)27-1-2007 19:19:09
Kilian, Crawford - The Empire of Time (v1.0) (html)


holoposters set into the walls blazed mindlessly at him:

WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT DOOMSDAY?

THERE'S A FUTURE FOR YOU in THE COLONIAL POLICE!

LEVY'S RYEтАФTHE TOAST OF TWELVE CHRONOPLANES WHAT ARE
YOU DOING ABOUT DOOMSDAY?

Nothing moved.

Pierce was frightened, but observed the phenomenon with an Agent's Trained
dispassion. Here was a "freeze" тАФan occupational hazard of Trainable Agents
after years of psychoconditioning. Its onset meant the Trainable's usefulness was
nearing its end.

Almost twenty years, he thought I must be due for it. But this is just the first
freeze; I could go for years without experiencing another one. I'm thirty-five;
another two or three years left, anyway. An image of a cabin on the California
coast, or on Thel or Ahania or even all the way back to Tharmas, flashed through
his mindтАФa cabin with apricot and cherry trees around it: The stereotypical
retirement for a used-up Agent. He would go mad with boredom. But some
Agents went a whole lifetime without freezing. Wigner. Well, he's only thirty-
nine, and he's got himself insulated. The bastard could spend half his time frozen
solid in his office, and no one would know.

The freeze was wearing off. Down the platform, Pierce saw a young man
approaching him, and worried. Had he noticed anything? The freeze could not
have lasted more than a second or two; the young man could not have noticed.