"Daniel Keys Moran - A Tale of the Continuing Time 04 - The AI War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

Trent owned her ship; Bittan obviously didn't want to do what Trent was asking of her, but couldn't think
of a way to say no. "All right," she said finally. "But I have just one thing to say to you: that was the worst
Bad Cop/Antichrist routine I ever saw."

Trent shrugged. "Well, the important thing is that we enjoyed ourselves."

Reverend Andy frowned. "No, the important thing is that we got the truth out of that boy."

Trent thought about it. "Well -- that's important, sure. But it's more important that we had a good time
while we were doing it, without having to hurt him. In the long run," Trent said to Captain Bittan, "there's
only two reasons to ever do anything: to enjoy yourself, and to help other people enjoy themselves." He
lifted his helmet into place and sealed it shut while Sid Bittan was still shaking her head.

"That man is crazy," she said to Reverend Andy.
The huge black man said gently, "No, he's just a holy man -- a bodhisatva," he clarified; Bittan was a
Buddhist. "They can be hard to deal with if you haven't known one before."

Sid Bittan snorted; she'd never met a bodhisatva before, but she knew Trent wasn't one.

Trent clicked his outspeakers on. "Don't talk about people in front of their p-suits. It's very impolite."

"I was saying nice things about you," Reverend Andy protested.

"Only because they're true," Trent said. "Only because they're true."
-2-
Trent and Reverend Andy took an unpressurized Chandler HuskySled back to Ceres CityState. It had
been an hour's trip over to the Vatsayama, and was an hour back; to conserve fuel, most of it was not
under boost.

The Milky Way glowed directly in front of Trent as they approached Ceres, a field of diamonds so bright
they had color, blue and white and red and yellow spread across black velvet, crossing Trent's field of
vision from end to end. Ceres ballooned as they approached, from a small, pitted gray rock to a
landscape some 760 klicks in diameter that blotted out the sky. Trent, piloting with his mind on other
things, performed the maneuver automatically, going in nose-first, braking rockets lit.

An encoded message was transmitted to Trent's inskin when they were less than eighty meters from
Gandhi CityState's Downlot 104. Ceres' gravity is negligible; for practical purposes it was a free fall
approach. Trent disconnected a portion of his attention from the approach and went Inside.

A simulation came alight: Captain Sidney Bittan, sitting in her chair on the bridge of the Vatsayama,
staring into the holo cameras. She fought to speak against acceleration so fierce it pulled her cheeks
back. "Trent!"

The nerve net in Trent's skull had, a decade prior, been programmed with the personality of Trent's
former Image, Johnny Johnny; today the pieces of Johnny Johnny's personality had largely been
integrated by Trent. But the Image code which Johnny Johnny had once used remained to him; it was a
trivial matter for Trent to assemble an Image of himself and beam it back to the Vatsayama. "Yes?"

Her voice was blurry from gee force. "After he decided we were really going to let him live, 'Sieur
Clearmountain remembered something else he wanted to share with us -- "