"Mckinley,.Robin.-.Sunshine" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

УI know,Ф I said.
УSOF monitors globenet usage for who likes to read up a lot on the Others,Ф said Aimil. УThatТs how they found me. They have a note of everybody who subscribes to the Darkline.Ф Which included both her and me. In theory any heavy-duty line into the cosworld will let you look up anything you like on the globenet, and the parameters are drawn only by your subscription price and the weight of the line. But in practice it is a little more specific than that. The Darkline is what you are going to choose if what you are chiefly interested in is looking up all the latest the globenet could give you on the Others without going to a Darkshop or the library or some other public hook-in for it.
If IТd ever given a passing real-world thought to anything outside my bakery, I would have known SOF must do stuff like monitor the Darkline. Which would mean they would know I used it. That, with my dad, was easily enough to interest them in me.
If IТd ever given a passing real-world thought to it, which I hadnТt. IТd lived in my own swaddled-up little world. I who had been the star pupil in June YanovskyТs vampire lit class. But that was the point, really. The Others were still something that happened between the covers of books like Vampire Tales and Other Eerie Matters. SOF shop talk overheard at CharlieТs was just live stories. Dry guys happened, but never to anybody I knew. Vampires were out there, but nowhere near me.
Until recently.
УWeТd already found you, of course,Ф Pat said to me, Уbecause of your dad.У
УYes,Ф I said. УYou could stop reminding me. Nothing wrong with your dad, is there?Ф I said to Aimil.
Aimil laughed a little bitterly and bowed her head. As her bangs fell across her forehead they left flickering mahogany bars against her skin. I blinked. УNothing that I know of. Or with my mom either. ThatТs why it came as such a shock to them when I had two sets of adult teeth come in, one inside the other. Fortunately my mom has a cousin whoТs a dentist. A discreet dentist. And scared to death there might be something wrong with his blood. Also fortunately my second set wasnТt the kind that keeps growing, although they were a funny shape. Once they were out theyТve stayed out. And my momТs cousin doesnТt have anything to do with our branch of the family any more. But IТm not registered. Remember Azar?Ф
I was already remembering Azar.
HeТd been the year between Aimil and me. My freshman year in high school, he was the only sophomore on the varsity football team. That was before his lower jaw began to drop and widen to hold the spectacular pair of tusks that started to grow at the same time. They took the tusks out, of course, but they couldnТt do much reconstructive surgery on his face till his jaw stopped expanding. After the first surgery his family left town so that he could start school again somewhere they hadnТt known him before. That was after heТd been registered. After our school had taken away all his sports awards because he was a partblood and must have hadЧipso factoЧan unfair advantage. Which is crap. And heТd been a nice guy. He wasnТt stupid or a bully.
УItТs an interesting situation,Ф Pat interrupted, Уbecause one of SOFТs official purposes is to find unregistered partbloods, register them, and fine their asses good, if not arrest them and throw them in jail, which happens sometimes too. One of SOFТs unofficial purposes is to find certain kinds of unregistered partbloods, protect them from getting found out, and persuade them to work for us. We really like librarians. They tend to have tidy minds.Ф
УLibrarian partbloods are probably flash easy to find,Ф said Aimil. УWeТll be the ones who belong to Otherwatch and Beware.Ф These are the two biggest globenet trawlers for Other Сfo, exclusive to the Darkline. For a modest extra monthly fee you too can download eleventy jillion gigabytes every week and experience mental overkill paralysis, unless you are a trained member of SOF or a research librarian or a prune-faced academic and have a cyborg overdrive button for taking in Тfo. I didnТt have the overdrive button. Besides, IТd always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice.
УI spend a few hours every week reading certain threads andЧ wellЧfollowing my nose.Ф
УWe contacted her because the filters sheТd set up herself on her subscription passwords seemed to bring her a peculiarly high level of source traffic by Others and partbloods, not just about them. So we had her in for a few chats and once she softened up a littleЕФ
УDid someone turn blue for you too?Ф I said. Aimil smiled. УYeah.Ф
УЧWe found out that that nose of hers often told her when your actual Other had actual fingers on the keyboard, and that has sometimes been very interesting,Ф said Jesse.
УEspecially when she picks up a sucker,Ф said Pat.
They all saw me freeze. УHey, kiddo,Ф said Pat. УThatТs kind of the point, you know? Nailing vampires. Remember?Ф
I nodded stiffly. The riftЧor did I mean riftsЧin my life were getting deeper and wider all the time. I only just stopped myself from reaching up to touch the thin white scar on my breast. If any of these people had noticed that IТd spent the entire sweltering summer wearing high-necked shirts they hadnТt mentioned it, and they werenТt mentioning that I had suddenly stopped wearing them for a mere autumn burst of pleasantly warm weather either.
УIЧI just donТt like talking about vampires,Ф I said, after a moment. If one-fifth of the worldТs wealthЧor possibly moreЧlay in vampire hands, of course there were a lot of them out there with not just basic com gear to handle their bloated bank balances but monster com networks that meant they had probably stopped noticing they werenТt able to go outdoors in daylight. Plenty of human com techies never went out in daylight either. But com networks would include trog lines into the globenet. And some vampires who had them no doubt amused themselves chatting up humans.
I knew this. But those vampires were scary faceless bogeypeople that SOF existed to deal with. What was I doing here in a SOF office?
Partbloods sticking together, I suppose. What if I told them I didnТt know I was one of the lucid ten percent? I shivered.
Did Bo have a line into the globenet? He was a master vampire. Of course he did.
Did Con?
I shivered again. Harder.
УSunshine, IТm sorryФ Aimil said. УI know it doesnТt mean much, but sometimes when IТm tracking someЧsome thing, even that much contact, through however many miles of trog and ether, it starts to make me sick. I canТt imagine what it must be like for you.Ф
True.
УNow, about that tea,Ф said Pat.
УYou still havenТt told me why youТre here, like, today, now, this minute, in PatТs office,Ф I said to Aimil.
She shook her head. УSerendipity, I guess. I showed up this afternoon to plug in my usual report and Pat brought me in here, said I was about to meet an old friend who was also a new recruit, and maybe I could reassure her that having anything to do with SOF doesnТt automatically mean youТre going to lose your interest in reading fiction and will wake up some morning soon with an overwhelming urge to wear khaki and start a firearm collection.Ф
Pat, who was wearing navy blue trousers and a white shirt, said, УHey.Ф
УNavy blue and white are khaki too,Ф said Aimil firmly. УBut Rae, I didnТt know it was you till you walked through the door.Ф
УThen why are you saying youТre sorry about what happened to me? What do you know about it?Ф
Aimil stared at me, visibly puzzled. УWhat happenedЧ? Since theЧthe other night all of Old Town knows you were in some kind of trouble with suckers, those two days you went missing last springЧ and a lot of us were already wondering. What else could it have been?Ф
Right. What else could it have been?
УIt could have been a rogue demon,Ф I said obstinately.
Aimil sighed. УNot very likely. A lot of partbloods can spot other partbloods, right? I havenТt got PatТs gift for that. But a fullblood demonЧif youТd been held by rogues, IТdСve known it. Like cat hair on your shirt. So would whoever from SOF interviewed you have known it. SOF wouldnТt have assigned someone to interview you who wouldnТt have known it.Ф
УAnd JocastaТs good,Ф said Pat. УEven better than me.Ф
УGoodФ wasnТt the adjective IТdСve chosen for my experience of that interview, but I let it pass.
УSo would a lot of other people who come into CharlieТs have known it,Ф Aimil continued. УHavenТt you noticedЧwell, like that Mrs. Bialosky hardly lets you out of her sight these days?Ф
УMrs. Bialosky is a Were,Ф I said.
УYeah. And her sense of smell is real good,Ф said Pat.
УSheТs another undercover SOF, I suppose,Ф I said.
Pat laughed. УSOF couldnТt hold her,Ф he said.
She and Yolande should get together, I thought, but I didnТt say it out loud. If SOF had no reason to look into my landlady I wasnТt going to suggest it to them. If Pat thought she was a siddhartha, all the better.
And if they already had looked, I didnТt want to know.
Jesse said gently, УYou know thereТs such a thing as friends as well as colleagues and neighbors, donТt you?Ф
I had my mouth open to say, УSure, and youТdСve been hanging around CharlieТs watching me with at least four eyes a day if IТd just been some poor mug that got mixed up in something ickily Other, right?Ф And then I closed it again, because I realized that the answer was yes. They might not have been watching me so intensely, and they might not have been watching me in the hopes that whatever had happened might lead them to something they could use without reference to a continuing and uninterrupted supply of cinnamon rolls, but they would have been watching me. Because that was what SOF was forЧin theory the first and most important thing it was forЧto keep our citizens safe. And SOF for all its faults took that pretty seriously. I sighed. УSo, how about that cup of tea? And then maybe youТll finally tell me why you wanted me to meet Aimil here.Ф
Pat spun his combox around so the screen faced Aimil. She sat down and tapped herself in, and the screen cleared to the globenet symbol. I averted my eyes. Since IТd started seeing in the dark I couldnТt look at any comscreen for long, TV, net, personal, GameDeluxe (not my territory, but Kenny had an amazing one), whatever. Brrrr. Vertigo wasnТt in it, although migraine came close. At least I wasnТt wasting subscription fees on Otherwatch and Beware by not having gone near my combox lately.
I could tell, however, watching out of my peripheral vision, that Aimil was calling up lists of mailsaves. She chose a list, hit a button, and mailtext blocks appeared. I felt an almost physical jolt, and reached out to steady myself on the back of her chair.