"L. E. Modesitt - Archform Beauty" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

"Even when I'm off," she added. "Use TP code."

"Stet, Captain." Then I headed down to my second-floor corner office.

Stopped outside in front of the consoles. Duty coordinator was Sarao--brunette, intense. Her name
sounded like "sorrow." It fit. Sometimes gave me grief. Practiced antique combat with sword and board.
Married old-style to a body-sculptor, but refused to let him sculpt her. Good choice, I thought.

"Resheed's report is in your linkfile." She looked at me, but she was still monitoring the inlinks.
"Thanks." It always was. Resheed was dependable. Then, all of trendside was. "Thoughts?"

"Like you said yesterday, something's coming down."

"Captain's worried."

Sarao nodded, her attention really on the feeds she was getting. Then she blinked and looked at me.
"Happy faces all over the place--at the Pavilion, on the shuttles. Face scans show a good ten percent
increase in soop use--or something like it."

More soop use meant that people weren't happy, turned to the designer exhilarant. But they couldn't stay
sooped forever. Lot of jobs required a nanite cleanjob before taking over a console or a system. Then,
most folks on soop were either students or servies, sometimes pennies. Wondered at times if soop could
make life better for a permie. Then, should it be? People didn't get permanent nanite behavior mods
unless they'd been convicted of two violent offenses or three significant offenses.

"Any localization?"

"Everywhere but southside and the towers." Sarao's voice was dry.

We both laughed. Hard laughs. Southside and the towers were gate-private. Nothing happened there in
public. Rumors about the filch orgies came up, but private was private so long as no one got hurt.
Wondered about that, too, after the Halburt clone scandal. How many others had been offed silently and
replaced with more tractable clones? Had any? Who could tell?

Trendside you learn early that you don't guess. Not about the filch. Hard evidence, that's fine. But you
don't fish there. Not without the captain's backing and full milspec nanite armor.

"I'll read it."

I walked through the door. It opened to my aura, then closed. My office was small, a third the size of the
captain's. Just enough room for the desk and the console and two ergochairs in front of the desk. Leaning
forward, I could see sunlight glittering the gold-leaf dome of the antique state capital--back when a state
meant something. Now it was a museum. Couldn't see the Continental Complex, down south beyond
southside. Could almost feel it, though, at times.

Called up Resheed's daily update, direct-link to my implant. Didn't tell me that much. ODs up, nothing to
flag any group. Except age--all were under twenty-five. Then, more than eighty percent always were. A
handful of vehicle delinks, including one electrolorry. The netops reported a new scam targeted at the
netless, offering them "free" access. Wasn't, of course. Area comm section had taken over on that.