"Larry Niven & Steve Barnes - The California Voodoo Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Alex chuckled contentedly as the image rotated like a pie in a microwave
oven. "Want to see?"

"How deep can you scan?"

The building wheeled until they were behind it, gazing west across the
rooftop recreation facilities. He zoomed out far enough for the roof to look
like a roof, a three-story cap of glass and concrete built onto the shelf of
rock called Clark's Ridge. Alex's fingers were a soft blur. "I'm not totally
sure," he murmured. "Shall we see?"

The visual field flashed from hyperrealistic to an X-ray display. Rock and
steel became transparencies, MIMIC's awesome bulk a glass model barely
three feet tall.

MIMIC blinked red on the third floor of the southeast quadrant and then
expanded to fill their field of vision. They passed through the walls, then
phased into a world of computer reconstruction. ScanNet was only forty
percent operational at the moment: unsecured zones were represented by
pulsing orange light. When fully implemented, the
system would turn the concrete, steel, and plastic of MIMIC into a kind of
ant farm, with every ant individually tagged.

Thousands of tiny human figures labored and strove within that maze of
walls and corridors. With the merest touch, Alex dove in, guided them
smoothly through the maze, and brought them to level three.

Eerily, they were looking into the circular security room. Its white-domed
ceiling arced away, desks and workstations collected at the central axis. In
the center of the room sat Alex and Sharon.

"Hall of mirrors, isn't it?"

Sharon reached out and pushed her forefinger into her own miniature back.
"Can we rotate that?"

"Easy." His voice dropped and steadied. "Rotate one-eighty." As if mounted
on a carousel, the entire image flipped. Sharon was facing herself.

She stuck out her tongue, then waved her right hand. The mirror image
waved its right hand, too.

"Want that reversed?"
"Nah." She examined her flawless complexion, leaned close, and wiped a
strand of blond hair away from her forehead. "Scan me, baby," she said
huskily. "Scan me good. "

A stream of physiological data materialised in the air beside her image.

Height: 69 inches