"Niven, Larry - Madness Has Its Place" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

I nodded placidly.

Anton shouldn't have told me about the broadcast from the Angel's Pencil. But he had, and if the ARM had noticed, they'd better hear him mention it again.

Company joined us, sampled, and departed. Anton and I spoke to a pair of ladies who turned out to have other tastes. (Some bends like to bug the straights.) A younger woman joined us for a time. She couldn't have been over thirty and was lovely in the modern style, but hard, sharply defined muscle isn't my sole standard of beauty.

I remarked to Anton, "Sometimes the vibes just aren't right."

"Yeah. Look, Jack, I have carefully concealed a prehistoric Calvados in my apt at Maya. There isn't really enough for four - "

"Sounds nice. Eat first?"

"Stet. There's sixteen restaurants in Maya."

A score of blazing rectangles meandered across the night, washing out the stars. The eye could still find a handful of other space artifacts, particularly around the moon.

Anton flashed the beeper that would summon a taxi. I said, "So you viewed the call. So why so tense?"

Security devices no bigger than a basketball rode the glowing sky, but the casual eye would not find them. One had to assume they were there. Patterns in their monitor chips would match the vision and sound patterns of a mugging, a rape, an injury, a cry for help. Those chips had gigabytes to spare for words and word patterns the ARM might find of interest.

So: no key words.

Anton said, "Jack, they tell a hell of a story. A... foreign vehicle pulled alongside Angela at four-fifths of legal max. It tried to cook them."

I stared. A spacecraft matched course with the Angel's Pencil at eighty percent o f lightspeed? Nothing man-built could do that. And warlike? Maybe I'd misinterpreted everything. That can happen when you make up your code as you go along.

But how could the Pencil have escaped? "How did Angela manage to phone home?"

A taxi dropped. Anton said, "She sliced' the bread with the, you know, motor. I said it's a hell of a story."

Anton's apartment was most of the way up the slope of Maya, the pyramidal arcology north of Santa Maria. Old wealth.

Anton led me through great doors, into an elevator, down corridors. He played tour guide: "The Fertility Board was just getting some real power about the time this place went up. It was built to house a million people. It's never been fully occupied."

So?

"So we're en route to the east face. Four restaurants, a dozen little bars. And here we stop."

"This your apt?"

"No. It's empty; it's always been empty. I sweep it for bugs, but the authorities... I think they've never noticed."

"Is that your mattress?"

"No. Kids. They've got a club that's two generations old. My son tipped me off to this."

"Could we be interrupted?"

"No. I'm monitoring them. I've got the security system set to let them in, but only when I'm not here. Now I'll set it to recognize you. Don't forget the number: Apt 23309."