"Murder In The Solid State" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mccarthy Wil)

"I just don't see the point of all this," he said now from across the falsewood lounge table. "I don't understand what you all are trying to build."
"Tools of oppression," Bowser opined cheerfully. An elbow straw extended from his glass to his smiling lips, nudging aside a paper umbrella speared with fruit.
"A better world," David countered, with considerably less cheer. Then: "Can I ask you something? Why are you here? The Bureau must have one or two guys who know a little chemistry, at least."
With quick movements of his eyebrows and neck, Puckett managed to communicate a simultaneous note of respect and contrition, like a debater acknowledging a point. "As it happens, I do know a little chemistry, but you're right; my degree is in criminology. We have a couple of specialists on a plane right this very moment; they'll be here later tonight. They'll handle some of the more technical aspects of the investigation. But it's still my case, and I prefer to minimize my ignorance."
"Good for you," Bowser said, his tone such that David couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic.
Henry Chong held up a hand and waved it at David and Bowser. Shut up, you two. "Our ultimate goal," he said, "is universal molecular assembly. The control of matter."
"Yeah," Puckett said, "but what for? "
"For anything. What do you want it to be for? That is what it's for. Like electricity, what is the purpose of that? When we control matter on a small-enough scale, it becomes possible to reorganize it. It becomes possible to create anything we want, even materials which cannot be fabricated by other means. Foamed diamond is an example, a material with very interesting thermal properties."
"It explodes," Bowser said.
Henry waved him off again. "At high temperatures, yes, but that is hardly my point. You cannot make diamond foam without very fine control over the crystallization process. When you gain that control, the world becomes a very different place."
Puckett pursed his lips, thinking. Slowly, he nodded.
"Hey Sanger!" came an anonymous voice from across the bar. "Plead guilty, asshole!"
Puckett and Chong and Bowser turned to see who had spoken. Silence fell.
David sighed. "I'm going to bed," he announced to the room. "Any further comments can be addressed to Special Agent Puckett, here. Good night." He rose from his chair.
"Oh," Bowser chided, "don't let some no-neck ruin your evening. Sit down."
"It's already ruined," David said. He threw a ten-dollar bill on the table and stalked away, his body language instructing the others not to follow him, not to bother him.
He almost wished, for simplicity's sake if nothing else, that he had killed Big Otto. And killed his cronies, too, every last one of them. Slowly.




CHAPTER SEVEN

You're free to go," Mike Puckett told David glumly. It was early Sunday afternoon, and the conference was winding down fast, like a tent city about to be moved. Except in this case, the tents were scattering, each loaded wagon heading off in a different direction. Such endings were always strangely sad, it seemed to David, but this time doubly so, as Puckett had failed in his search for a new prime suspect.
"Are you giving up?" David asked with some surprise. "Not really," Puckett replied. "I've got a list of folks who left the hotel early, and I'll follow up on those. You have to admit, it'd be hard to play cool here all weekend if you'd murdered somebody. Be tough to stick around." His tone was leading, suggestive.
"I wouldn't know," David said Quietly. "Ah." Puckett clapped him on the shoulder. "Can't blame a guy for trying. Listen, you're still a suspect in the case, so check in with me at the D.C. office when you get back to Philly. And don't go anywhere else without talking to me, OK? That's a felony; I wouldn't want to see you get in trouble."
"I never go anywhere."
"I'm taking a taxi to the station," Henry Chong said, suddenly materializing at David's elbow. "Are you coming? The train will leave in about an hour." He turned to Mike Puckett. "He can leave now, yes?"
Puckett nodded. "Yes, please. Take him away. Call me if you hear anything. And hey, thanks for a lovely weekend." He cracked a professional, government-issue smile as he said this.
David hefted his bag, pulled it up higher on his shoulder. "Actually, I think I'll ride back with Bowser. He's got his car up here; it should be a little more comfortable than Amtrak."
"Ah," said Henry. "Well, then I will see you tomorrow morning. I'm ... very sorry about what has happened. This would have been a very good opportunity for you."
"I know. Tell me about it."
"You understand there will be other opportunities? Many of them, many more than you can count. The future is long."
Tell that to Vandegroot, Bowser would say if he were here. David simply nodded.
"Have a pleasant trip," Henry said, turning to go.
"Thanks, you too."
"The eighteenth-century colonial gov'," Bowser was saying, "buddy, that was all brought down by a.bad cold and a rather pathetic encryption scheme. I'll tell you the story sometime; it's not in your history books."
Traffic on the interstate was light, and Bowser was driving fast. Wind noise roared at them through open windows. It was warm outside, the sun shining down through puffy cloud islands low in the sky, and the interior of the Jeep was warmer still, so that David found himself wishing they had the hardtop off, had the wind blowing directly in their faces, ruffling through their hair. Muffling Bowser's incessant chatter.
He turned his attention once more to the cardfile box in his lap: Bowser's license collection. Well, the portable component of it, at least; Bowser had a file drawer full of wall certificates and such in his study at home.
Looking through the collection was always a little eerie, a keyhole peek at the strange world of Bowser's mind. Little plastic dividers split the cardfile into six categories, labeled TRANSPRT, COMMERCE, ADMIN, COMMN-CATNS, MISC, and DANGEROUS. This last section was by far the most unsettling. What, for example, did Bowser need with a License to Handle Class III Explosives? Or a Lab Chemistry Permit? Even David didn't have one of those, and he was, technically speaking, a Doctor of Chemistry.
But with Bowser it was less a question of need than of possibility. Heavy-equipment operator? Just a quiz and a road test and a nominal fee. "You can get a license to do anything," he was fond of saying, and if this cardfile were any basis for judgment, he was probably right.
"What percentage of these do you actually use?" David inquired.
Not surprisingly, Bowser ignored the question, as he always did.
". . . can't even buy a good judge these days," he was saying. "Not even in the private sector. What I wouldn't give for some corruption that worked in favor of the little guy!"
"You know, it's been a long weekend," David pointed out tiredly.
Bowser grinned at him. "One murder too many, eh? Personally, I think the old man had it coming. The Duke of Search and Seizure, you'd better believe he's put a lot of people behind bars. And pulled a lot of contraband out of average people's homes. That kind of thing tends to piss people off."
"Bowser," David sighed, "will you cut it with the politics already? Professional rivalry is what killed Big Otto."
"You seem awful sure."
"Oh, come on! He was killed in the middle of an AMFRI conference, in the middle of a thousand people who hated his guts."
"Hell of a cover, eh?" Bowser's grin had widened, and his eyebrows went up and down, Groucho Marx-style. "If I were going to kill him, that's exactly where I'd do it."