"Richard Morgan - Thirteen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morgan Richard)

be done haphazardly, as an up shot of struggles in the murky realm where big business, organised crime
and the hidden parts of government vie for control.

-John Gray, Straw Dogs

Human, to the discontinuous mind, is an absolutist concept. There can be no half measures. And from this
flows much evil.

-Richard Dawkins, A Devil's Chaplain

PROLOGUE: HOMEWARD BOUND

G leaming steel, gleaming steelтАж

Larsen blinks and shifts slightly on the automated gurney as it tracks under a linear succession of lighting
panels and lateral roof struts. Recognition smears in with vision, blurry and slow; she's in the dorsal
corridor. Overhead, light angles off each metal beam, sliding from glint to full-blown burst and back as
she passes below. She supposes it's the repeated glare that's woken her. That, or her knee, which is
aching ferociously, even through the accustomed groggy swim of the decanting drugs. One hand rests on
her chest, pressing into the thin fabric of the cryocap leotard. Cool air on her skin tells her she's otherwise
naked. An eerie sense of d├йj├а vu steals over her with the knowledge. She coughs a little, tiny remnants of
tank gel in the bottom of her pumped-out lungs. She shifts again, mumbles something to herself.

тАжnot againтАж?

"Again, yes. The cormorant's legacy, yes, again."

That's odd. She didn't expect another voice, least of all one talking in riddles. Decanting's usually a wholly
mechanized process, the datahead's programmed to wake them before arrival, and unless something's
gone wrongтАж

So you're the big expert on cryocapping now, are you?

She isn't-her entire previous experience comes down to three test decantings and the one real deal at
journey's end on the voyage out, whence, she supposes, the d├йj├а vu. But stillтАж

тАжmore than threeтАжтАжit is not more, it is notтАж

The vehemence in the retort has a ragged edge on it that she doesn't like. If she'd heard it in another
person's voice, a test subject's voice, say, she'd be thinking sedatives, maybe even a call to security. In
her own thoughts, it's suddenly, intimately chilling, like the realization that there's someone in the house
with you, someone you didn't invite in. Like the thought out of nowhere that you might not be wholly
sane.

This is the drugs, Ellie. Let go, ride it out.

Gleaming stee-

The autogurney bumps slightly as it takes a right turn. For some reason, it sets off a violent jolt in her
pulse, a reaction that, drugged, she labels almost idly as panic. A tremor of impending doom trickles