"Jack McKinney - Kaduna Memories" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

Wealthy is how I am, he shouted to himself. Wealthy and powerful and Christ! too busy to even digest
my food properly.

He stopped short of REC'S door to flatten a hand against his gut and belch. Christ, he muttered.

The AI's roomтАФthe REC room, as it was known to some-was a study in noise and cacoscopy. REC
had grown so fond of the external sensors his cyber engineers had given himтАФ his windows on the
worldтАФthat he insisted on assimilating new data through what he had recently come to think of as live
coverage. Hence, the room was equipped with some three dozen CRTs arrayed in an enormous
pyramid, an equal number of audio players of varied format, and several works of priceless sculpture and
painting that had been shuttled up over the past year from Emeric's downside pleasure palace in southern
Florida.

REC, Clay Nugget once told Emeric, was becoming a regular data junkie.

"Emeric," the AI said now, full of childlike surprise, at once deactivating the room's sound and light.

"Good to see you, REC," Emeric said, smiling for the optical scanners. "I'm sorry it's been awhile. I've
been meaning to callтАж"

"You're busy," REC continued in an understanding if somewhat disappointed tone that brought a lump to
Bulkroad's throat. "But I have missed you."

In a sense, the AI was his only childтАФthe Bulkroad seed being too precious to plant in just any soil. The
importance of selective breeding was one of the things the late Emeric senior had impressed upon him,
right up until the moment he'd climbed into his cryogenic coffin. Regard all women with suspicion, he'd
cautioned even as the lid came down. Especially the chic and the glamorous ones, Emeric. The ones
with lust in their eyes and sin in their hearts. And remember the retrovirus тАж

On his own, in any case, Emeric had decided that he was in no rush to father or clone. Not when there
was so much to be gained by tactical flirtation. Besides, it wasn't as if he were condemned to pass his life
downside, mired in the soup, where one had to rest content with a life span of only seventy or eighty
years at most. Up here in the Islands, who knew what wonders lay in store? Why, he might even live to
be one hundred and twenty, one hundred and fifty. And with cryogenic ice-elation available, death itself
was beginning to lose all meaning for the privileged. The concept was of some historical interest perhaps,
like nationalism.

The history of twenty-first-century advances in both cryogenics and space travel was the history of
Offworld Lifting and Development, which in turn was very much the history of the Washington
Bulkroads. Founded by former astronaut and megaengineer Emeric senior, OLDтАФthen in limited
partnership with IBM and the Bechtel GroupтАФwas the first private corporation to lift comsats for the
multinationals; the first to lift pole-ice melting mirrors for the Soviets; the first to construct a fully
operational orbital habitat; the first to manufacture biochips and nano-devices for the likes of Merck,
TripleM, and E. Prime Corp.
Now half a dozen corps with orbital facilities were offering contracts for Mars and Venus lifts,
custom-designed theme habitats, and space-manufactured drugs, plastics, and semiconductors; but
Offworld L&D remained the big kid in orbit, the one the wealthy and influential looked to for guaranteed
product, assured travel, and five-star luxury. And, under the guidance of Emeric junior, OLD was the
only corp to have begun a prospecting survey of the asteroids.