"Rampart World - 02 - Orion Arm" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

Corruptor and corruptee had conferred face-to-face only once before, at the very beginning of Galapharma's bid to take over Rampart Starcorp. Since then the two men had communicated via intermediaries, covert ops belonging to the big Concern's security organization who would mysteriously appear to request progress reports or deliver instructions. He had no idea why Gala's capricious CEO had elected to set up this meeting in Coventry Blue instead of in a more seemly venue.
Unless he'd done it for educational purposes.
So here goes our corporate antihero, an upright, uptight respected executive of Rampart, on a quickie tour of hell. His perilous game is approaching its climax. If he wins, he'll get everything he's ever wanted. If he loses, he could come to Coventry Blue to stay... for the rest of his life.
The hoppercraft flies slowly at a low altitude, reined in by the computers of Traffic Control. Even in the wee hours the Shore Freeway and Queen Elizabeth Way are crowded with cars and transit vehicles flowing in orderly streams to and from the radiant central umbrella. Luminosity reflects from low-hanging clouds, revealing the residential districts and industrial parks of Mississauga and Etobicoke, their wet streets gleaming beneath neatly spaced streetlamps.
To the north is a less tidy enclave of about nine thousand acres. Its irregular perimeter is outlined by bright sapphire lights that surmount a ten-meter-high wall topped by razor-wire and Kagi guns on pivoting stanchions. At the eastern side of the complex is a gatehouse and security checkpoint. A single garishly illuminated thoroughfareЧPeel Road, a.k.a. the Blue StripЧleads from the gate into Coventry's interior.
The main drag of the prison village is solidly packed with upscale cars. The byways, almost deserted, have meager streetlighting or none at all. There are no trees or other ornamental vegetation anywhere. Except for the bizarre come-hither architecture of the clip joints, pusher palaces, and bordellos along the Strip, the structures of Coventry are built of drab plascreteЧdismal apartment blocks and jerry-built flops for the more peaceable Throwaways, lockups and warehouse facilities for the wig-outs and immobile sickies, un-sanctioned fortified town houses inhabited by the convict elite who exploit their lesser fellows, and a guard barracks near the prison entrance. Smaller boxy units accommodate inmate services, tacky small shops and take-out food joints, storefront churches and charitable institutions, and the innumerable enterprises of Blue's illegal economy. Windows of the off-Strip buildings are mostly dark, in obedience to the selectively enforced midnight curfew regulations. In a few, oleum-flame lanterns and even candles cast a wan yellowish glow. Burnt-out ruins and heaps of rubble occupy some of the weedy open areas. Others serve as parking accommodation for visiting hoppercraft or cars and have bonfires burning to signal available space.
His Daimler reaches its destination and hovers until he takes over the controls. Borstal Street runs parallel to the Blue Strip. Its intersection with Mamertine is at the western end of the penal complex, nearly five kilometers from the gate. He descends toward the parking lot designated by Alis-tair Drummond.
The Daimler's terrain-scan monitor shows a level area crowded with at least sixty expensive hoppers, incongruous amidst the squalid surroundings. Their security shields throb faintly crimson in the rain, warning that intruders will be shocked into insensibility. Only a handful of the private aircraft show visible registration alphanumerics on the roof. The rest have ID illegally obscured for the duration of their stay in Coventry.
For a brief moment he hesitates. (Calm! Competence! Courage!) Then he lands in a space as near to the lot's bonfire as possible. A parking attendant comes out of a shanty and slowly approaches over the muddy ground. The figure waits at a safe distance for him to emerge.
He buckles on twin holsters, checks the load in his Ivanov stun-gun and the charge indicator on the Kagi photon pistol. He programs the remote control gorget for the hopper and locks it around his neck, zips the armor jacket and pulls down the visor. He stuffs his wrist wallet with cash and a single blind draft credit card, then pulls on zapper gloves.
The Throwaway attendant stands motionless as he climbs out and touches his gorget to lock the aircraft and engage the security system. He can hear the noise of the Strip a block away: high-db rock music with yelping electronic toms and seismic bass, obbligato horn honks from the traffic jam, a volley of mystifying animalian howls. Underlying it all is the roar of carousing humans.
"Morning, guv," says the attendant. "That'll be two hundred fifty."
He can't help being outraged. "So much!"
The convict shrugs. "Take it or leave it, citizen. That's the fee. You have a complaint, file it with King Kwadena Akosu. The lot belongs to him. You'll find him at Casino Royale."
"Hmph. I suppose you want a tip as well."
"Your gratuity would be deeply appreciated. And bless you, guv."
A barely legible name badge identifies the Throwaway as GAVIN D. He is gaunt, scraggily bearded, and his grin reveals two chipped front teeth. Between his glazed red-rimmed eyes is a metallic button identifying him as a buzzhead, addicted to electronic stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain. His rainsuit is old and ill-fitting, patched with duct tape, smudged in soot, stained repugnantly about the crotch. Only his voice, hoarse but still retaining the inflection of an expensive education, reveals that Gavin D. was once more than human debris.
Who was he when he lived Outside? A too clever corporate lawyer? A financial officer caught with his hand in the till? A data thief? Another faithless executive who sold company secrets to the opposition?
Gavin D. waits patiently, holding out a filthy hand with broken black fingernails. "Cash or plastic. Your first visit to Coventry Blue?"
"Yes," he growls. Sort out the money, fork it over. A grudging twenty for the tip. The man's stink penetrates the closed visor. He backs away in distaste but Gavin D. follows, rummaging in the side pocket of his rainsuit.
Is he going for a weapon? Panic! Drag the Ivanov out of its holster. "Stand back, damn you!"
"EasyЧeasy does it, guv." A contemptuous snicker. "No one here will hurt you." Wink. Grin. "Unless you pay them to." The convict pulls a cheap e-book from his pocket and proffers it. "Complimentary guide to the local scene. What sort of action are you looking for? Sex? Dope? Gladiators? Gaming?"
He waves away the book. "Which way to a place called the Silver Scybalum?" This is the rendezvous specified by Alis-tair Drummond.
Silenced in mid-spiel, the attendant's eyes show a spark of revulsion before reverting to practiced blankness. "So you're one of those ... Well, different strokes for different folks. I hope you brought your niobium Visa card. You're looking at ultra-pricey show biz at the SS."
"Never mind. Just tell me how to find it. And what's a scy-balum, anyhow?"
"Look in the display window when you get there." The Throwaway hesitates and then the grin returns, sly and vindictive. "I wouldn't want to spoil your fun, but you ought to know that the performers there are genengineered humans, not the real thing. Neither are the baby ho's in the shorteye joints. Genen adult inmates, every last one. No real kids in Coventry. The female consЧ"
"Which way, goddammit?"
"Don't get your twat in a twist. Go down to the Strip, hang a left, go two blocks. You can't miss it." Gavin D. turns away and shuffles back to his hovel to await the next customer.
He sets off, moving cautiously on the broken pavement and repeating his soothing mantra over and over. Calm, competence, courage! This is a test He'll ace it, and to hell with Drummond's mindfucking control games.
He passes a row of dark, ramshackle flophouses. The only illuminated place is a Catholic mission with a holosign that says FREE MEALS 24 MRS. The projection depicts a smiling Jesus sketching a blessing with one hand and offering a steaming-hot burger plate with the other. A vagrant slouches in the mission doorway, chugalugging the last of a bottle of fortified plonk. Inside, a brother in a white karategi with a black belt waits to unlock and admit him, sans booze.
Farther along the street are shuttered storefronts: a day-labor exchange, a noodle shop, a minimart with an iron grille across the door and windows. Ragbaggy forms huddle in some of the doorways, wrapped in foil blankets against the pelting downpour.
One calls out to him as he hurries by, an elderly woman whose face is barely visible. "Spare some small change, citizen? Brings good luck to feed the animals at the Blue Zoo, you know."
He is superstitious enough to stop and toss her a small-denomination bill, which she deftly snatches out of midair. He asks, "Why in the world are you sleeping outside on a night like this?"
"Safer here than in the dormitory blocks," she tells him. "No lushrollers, no pussy bandits or bugnuts crawling in bed with you, no screaming meemies, no psychoid icemen looking to waste you for the fun of itЧ" He shuts his ears to the catalog of horrors and hurries away, finally reaching the blazing clamor of the Strip.
Here the sidewalks are thronged with roisterers wearing costly rain gear. Many of the pedestrians are anonymously hooded and visored, as he is, but fair numbers of the most youthful men and women go bareheaded in spite of the bad weather. Flashily dressed, shrieking with sycophantic laughter as they cling to the arms of their incognito escorts, these can only be professional whores imported from Outside. Coventry Blue's population of upper-echelon corporate felons probably has a perennial shortage of inmates who are young, attractive, and reasonably priced.
The funhouses stand cheek by jowl, tricked out with giant holograms, flashing strobes, laser pattern generators, neon constructs, even blinking incandescent-bulb marquees. He cannot help gaping at the outrageous displays and the signs that shriek and blare the Blue Strip's extravagances:

LIVE YOUR WILDEST WET DREAM GORGEOUS GALS FAB FAGS KLASSY KIDDIES LOVERLY LIVESTOCK PSYCHODELICADO BOUTIQUE LE POT DE CHAMBRE CORRECTIVE WHIPPERSNAPPERS ORGY PORGY HELGA'S HOUSE OF PAIN ROCKET FUEL DEPOT NARC NOOKY CESSPOOL FOLLIES PETER PUFFER'S POOFTAH PALACE BLOOD GLADIATORS OF ANCIENT ROME CASINO ROYALEЧLOWEST ODDS ON EARTH BOOGIE BOMBITA BANDITA RUSSIAN ROULETTE VAMPIRB PLANET ELECTRIC BREATHING LESSONS SALADIN'S SNUFFBOXЧ100% REAL DEATH DRUGS DRUGS DRUGS SEX SEX SEX XXX . . .

Grimly, he shoulders his way through the mob, fending off the stoned and the importunate. Barkers and strong-arm touts aggressively seek his custom, but a warning gesture with his zapper glove sends them off with a cheery "Fuck you, guv!" flung after him. The teaser spectacles in the show windows startle him, nauseate him, even arouse himЧto his shame and consternation, for he is a cultural snob who had thought himself to be above such vulgar titillation.
Calm. Competence. Courage.
And God damn Alistair Drummond.
At last he sees his goal, a surprising oasis of conservatism amidst the crashing hullaballoo. The large building's facade is slick black, with a bas-relief frieze that appears to wriggle and contort, as though trapped living things are attempting to escape a river of tar. A modest sign above the sheltering portico says SILVER SCYBALUM. The entrance is flanked by two gargantuan doormen in imitation spacesuits of glolame with reflective helmets. On either side of the doorway are large windows. The one on the left is curtained with silvery drapes. The other, artfully spotlighted, features a curious grotto of pitted white rock thickly mottled and veined by black and red minerals. Some of the cavities are lined with beautiful ruby-colored crystals.
He approaches and joins a group of idlers who stare at the xeno creature behind the glass. It has the general shape and bulk of a sea lion. The body is roughly pear-shaped, clad in a greenish pebbled hide, possessing only two front limbs armed with oversized claws with which the thing has anchored itself to the irregular sidewall of the artificial cave.
The hideous wrinkled head is oversized, naked, leathery, with tiny red eyes. Wormlike feelers surround its open beak and apparently guide interior mouth parts that work like reciprocating drills, pecking industriously at the rock. A larger appendage, like a warty tongue, laps up mineral dust as fast as it is produced. The hole the creature has gouged sparkles with minute raw metal surfaces and freshly broken crystals that look like scarlet flecks of pepper.
He reads the descriptive sign at the front of the exhibit.
The sapient denizens of Gwalior [Sector 8], requiring arsenic and sulfur in their unique metabolism, consume native rock containing the red mineral proustite (silver arsenic sulfide) together with free silver. The latter is egested as a waste product.
After a few minutes the Gwaliorite detaches itself from the wall and flops down with comical abandon, inspiring considerable mirth among the observers. It slithers clumsily to a pool of steaming liquid and drinks daintily. Then it rears back and begins to shiver.
"Yes!" cries one of the crowd. "Do it, sweetheart!" Others contribute encouraging shouts.
The trembling intensifies and the Gwaliorite utters a series of prolonged screams, broadcast electronically to the world at large. He recognizes the exotic ululation he had heard earlier, in the hopper park.