"Kevin O'Donnel Jr. - The Journeys of McGill Feighan 01 - Caverns" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

"I don't think the problem's here," insisted the computer man. "Really. It's
got to be in the implant-trans. Or maybe in the triangulators; those receivers
are tricky, you know. If you don't wire them just right, hell, an airliner
passing overhead gives you a blip."
"This is more than a simple blip." He fought for self-control, and settled
for a fast pace up and down the room. "When your machine tells me that
that child travels nine meters, northwest to southeast, in a straight line,
dropping three meters as he moves, and does it all instantaneouslyтАФ" He
didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. The programmer knew what
happened to members of The Organization who didn't do their jobs right.




Chapter III
┬л^┬╗

At a few minutes to midnight, a gray man awoke in a piss-stunk alley.
Above his head glimmered a strip of stars, broken bottles catching
headlights on a highway. They were old friends; he'd Flung himself to
many of themтАФonce upon a timeтАФwhen he'd been young and
strongтАФwhen laughter had been as natural as breathing. That was before
he'd retired, before he'd become so Sensitive.
Voices and music and glass clatter tumbled through the nearby bar's back
door; he sat up, coughing and hawking in unison with a rummy impatient
to take his nest among the garbage cans.
His name was Jose Schwedeker; he was sixty-three years old, a retired
Flinger, and rich, by normal standards. By the standards of his needs, he
was desperately poor. And desperately competing with an emaciated man
named Mort Tobbins, who was, he knew, Searching for the same surcease
he was. Old Mort. They never had been friends. Fitting that in this June of
2088, their rivalry was less diminished than they.
The derelict's face hung above his, like a bewhiskered moon studying its
reflection in a pond. Their mingled odors were worse than the alley's. "Take
it," he grunted, crawling out of the bed of rags and crashing over a dented
can in the process. For a moment he heard a bell, soft and distant and silver,
and he started toward it, aching for its peace, but then a buzz saw rasped in
his brain and chewed his hangover into separate but equal tormentors. The
broken asphalt was wet beneath his dirty palms; he pushed himself to his
feet and stumbled toward the back entrance of the bar.
"No' friendly i' there," wheezed the rummy. Bottle uptilted, he gurgled
cheap wine through the gaps in his teeth. "No creditтАФno workтАФnothing."
His legs gave way and he sat down abruptly.
 " 'sokay," said Schwedeker, waving a hand and almost losing his own
balance. He grabbed at the doorframe to steady himself, to gather the
strength and the courage he needed to enter. Termites tunneled through his
gray cells, but their sound was that of a wolf pack shredding a carcass.
His change-ringer, gray-haired Anita Nkame, once the best of the
Movers, had tried to tell him how age would mock him. "Your body, Jose,
he weakens," his mentor said. They'd been hiding from the winter in his