"Kim Newman - Tomorrow Town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

Muzac keyed in somehow to the emotional state of any given assembly?

"We, ah, founded the Foundation together."

Back in the 1950s, Varno Zhoule had written many articles and stories for
science fiction magazines, offering futuristic solutions to contemporary
problems, preaching the gospel of better living through logic and technology.
He had predicted decimal currency and the vertical-takeoff aeroplane. Georgie
Gewell was an award-winning editor and critic. He had championed Zhoule's
work, then raised finances to apply his solutions to the real world. Richard
understood the seed money for the Foundation came from a patent the pair held
on a kind of battery-powered circular slide rule that was faster and more
accurate than any other portable calculating device.

Gewell was as tall as Richard, with milk-fair skin and close-cropped
snow-white hair. He had deep smile and frown lines and a soft, girlish mouth.
He was steadily leaking tears, not from grief but from thick, obvious
reactalite contact lenses that were currently smudged to the darker end of
their spectrum.

The other zenvols were an assorted mix, despite their identical outfits. Most
of the men were short and tubby, the women lithe and fitтАФwhich was either Big
Thinks's recipe for perfect population balance or some visioneer's idea of a
good time for a tall, thin fellow. Everyone had hair cut short, which made
both Richard and Vanessa obvious outsiders. None of the men wore facial hair
except a red-faced chap who opted for the Puritan beard-without-a-moustache
arrangement.

Gewell introduced the delegation. The oriental girl was Moana, whom Gewell
described as "town speaker," though she continued to communicate only by
signing. The beardie was Mal-K, the "senior medico" who had presided over the
autopsy, matched some bloody fingerprints and seemed a bit put out to be taken
away from his automated clinic for this ceremonial affair. Other significant
zenvols: Jess-F, "arbitrage input tech," a hard-faced blonde girl who
interfaced with Big Thinks when it came to programming dispute decisions, and
thus was the nearest thing Tomorrow Town had to a human representative of the
legal systemтАФthough she was more clerk of the court than investigating
officer; Zootie, a fat little "agri-terrain rearrangement tech" with a bad
cold for which he kept apologising, who turned out to have discovered the body
by the hydroponics vats and was oddly impressed and uncomfortable in this
group, as if he weren't quite on a level of equality with Gewell and the rest;
and "vocabulary administrator" Sue-2, whom Gewell introduced as "sadly, the
motive," the image of a penitent young lady who "would never do it again."

Richard mentally marked them all down.

"You'll want to visit the scene of the crime?" suggested Gewell. "Interrogate
the culprit? We have Buster in a secure store-room. It had to be especially
prepared. There are no lockable doors in Tomorrow Town."