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

The monorail judged they had used up their changing time, and lurched off again.




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The receiving area was as white and clean as a bathroom display at the Belgian Ideal Home Exhibition. A deputation of zenvols, all dressed alike, none with mismatched sleeves, waited on the platform. Synthesised Bach played gently and the artificial breeze was mildly perfumed.
"Mm Richard, Ms Vanessa," said a white-haired zenvol, "welcome to Tomorrow Town."

A short Oriental girl repeated his words in sign language.

"Are you Georgie Gewell?" Richard asked.

"Jor-G," said the zenvol, then spelled it out.

"My condolences," Richard said, shaking the man's hand. Through two squeaking layers of latex, he had the impression of sweaty palm. "I understand you and Varno Zhoule were old friends."

"Var-Z is a tragic loss. A great visioneer."

The Oriental girl mimed sadness. Other zenvols hung their heads.

"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" segued into the "Dead March" from Saul. Was the 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 fitЧwhich 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 systemЧthough 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."

"He's nailed in," said Jess-F. "With rations and a potty."

"Very sensible," commented Richard.

"We can prise the door open now you're here," said Gewell.

Richard thought a moment.

"If you'll forgive me, Mr JepЧah, Mm Richard," said Mal-K, "I'd like to get back to my work. I've a batch of anti-virus cooking."