"Kevin O'Donnel Jr. - The Journeys of McGill Feighan 04] - Cliffs" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

of sense. The hotel, for example. A thousand dollars a night for a
two-bedroom suite with a kitchenette. Granted, he could afford it, if not
from his salary, then at least from the income generated by his ten million
dollar trust fund, but still, why was he paying three hundred sixty-five
thousand dollars a year for the roof over their heads? He already owned a
penthouse apartment twice the suite's size, and it sat empty.
That is to say, no one currently lived there.
Rather, no one alive lived there.
But Greystein would be there. Marion Jefferson Greystein, McGill
Feighan's roommate at the Flinger Academy and best friend ever since. He
had helped Feighan scour the city for a suitable residence, had hand-wired
all the electronic controlsтАФincluding Oscar, the apartment computerтАФhad
argued with Feighan about carpet piles and furniture styles and the colors of
the hangings on the walls. He had livened the place with his laughter and
saddened it with his sorrows. His spirit had soaked so deeply into the very
fabric of the apartment that the place still trembled with an echo of his
essence.
Greystein had gone bad, though. Something had snapped inside him. He
took to drink and degeneracy and Feighan himself had had to put him down
like a mad dog.
Surely Greystein's ghost stalked the penthouse.
How could Feighan return to that?
By now thoroughly dismal, he reached their hotel. With a shuffling
half-step he adjusted his pace to the twirl of its revolving door. The security
apparatus built into the entrance arch measured him from forty different
angles and compared its findings with data stored at the time he registered.
Identifying him, it trained its tranquilizer guns on the next person in line
and permitted him to pass unscathed.
Glitterati from a hundred worlds mingled in the lobby; he moved through
them like a knife through shadow. No one acknowledged him, though a bell
captain stepped out of his way as he walked up to the elevators.
Eighty-eight stories later, he moped down the corridor to their suite. The
door stood open.
It should not have.
He tensed: For too many of his twenty-two years a crime syndicate called
The Organization had stalked him, hoping to wring from him the truth of
his relationship to the Far Being Retzglaran. Though it was a mystery he
himself had been trying to solve all his life, The Organization had never
believed him. McGill Feighan had learned never to leave a house or a home
or even an overpriced hotel suite without locking its doors thoroughly.
He flattened himself against the wall. His hand rested on his
jewel-studded leather belt; his mind bubbled with the powers of his Talent.
Gryll, a sub-chieftain in The Organization, had called a truce after their
encounter on Actu. If someone from The Organization had violated that
truce by invading Feighan's privacy, that someone would regret it for a long
time to come. Slowly he peered around the edge of the doorframe, ready to
strike.
And then he reddened. No one had broken into his room. A squat,
wheeled maid clad in sheet mirrors was dusting the coffee table, first wiping
it with a wax-impregnated cloth and then bathing it in ultraviolet light