"Garbage Day" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mccarthy Wil)

weren't explicitly recorded in a wellstone matrix they left, like, quantum
traces in the rocks or something. Ghosts. With enough patience and computing
power, almost any event could be reconstructed.
Ignoring the ill will around them, Bascal surveyed the chamber itself, and
laughed. "I think we're here, men."
There was an escalator leading up to street level, and Ho Ng and Steve Grush,
with hardly a glance at Bascal or any of the others, hopped onto it and went up.
The prince, perhaps sensing a threat to his leadership, hopped onto the down
escalator and called out, "Onward! Onward!"
It wasn't hard to run upward against the descending staircase, although what
effort it took was strangely infuriating, the laws of gravity doubly stacked
against you. And the people riding down were of course not amused as the boys
swarmed past, but nobody said anything or tripped anyone, so Bascal made it to
the top only a few moments behind Ho and Steve. And right there beside him was
Conrad, the right-hand man, feeling important. Oh, he'd felt important a time or
two already this summer, going to the same camp as the Prince of Sol. But this
was different, this was nonaccidental. The two of them were actual friends.
"This is raw," he said to Bascal in a low, private tone, and the prince
responded with a fist raised defiantly but low, where only Conrad could see it.
"Until somebody recognizes their pilinisi, me boyo. Then it gets complicated."
"Mmm." Conrad could only nod knowingly. "Pilinisi" was the Tongan word for
prince, and he knew Ч or imagined he knew Ч what that meant for Bascal's life.
No shortage of women, for one thing, but no privacy either. Everyone figured
they knew him, when in fact almost nobody really did. But really, this
disheveled boy in camp shirt and boating culottes didn't much resemble the
Bascal Edward you saw on TV.
Up at ground level, circular doorways irised open for them in the terminal
building's glass outer wall. The air outside was perfect: summer-warm and
sunset-cool, not a bit muggy. It smelled of food: garlic and fresh-baked bread,
maybe kettle corn popping somewhere nearby. The sidewalks were concrete with
inlays of what looked like real stone Ч you could tell by the rough texture of
it, not at all like a wellstone emulation.
So here they were: 16th and Market in the Mile High City, an almost mythical
address. To the east a few blocks was Self Similar Street, where they were still
recording the puppet show live every week. Somewhere to the south was the Cola
Dome where the Broncos and Avalanche and Nuggets still played, where famous
concerts were held, and paintball battles. On the streets, as advertised, was
actual vehicular traffic: white buses and yellow/black taxis, delivery trucks
and horse-drawn carriages. Rather a lot of bicycles, too, piloted not by
children but by serious-looking adults swathed in impact-resistant wellcloth.
There were also a few pedicabs drawn by midgets, which struck Conrad as an odd
touch indeed: where did you find midgets in an age of perfect health?
The sidewalks were crowded and vibrant, full of obstacles for the pedestrians to
flow around in artful patterns. This was a city of posts and pedestals, columns
and obelisks. A fountain burbled merrily. There were little trees everywhere,
maples and poplars and even acacias, no more than four or five meters tall. But
the towers looming all around were anything but miniature, blocking the view. It
was only when Bascal led them around a corner onto 16th Street that anything
resembling mountains became visible, hulking dimly ahead in the sunset, shrouded
by clouds, crowded from beneath by low buildings. But the mountains were lower