"Steve Perry - Matador 03 - The Machiavelli Interface" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

THE MACHIAVELLI INTERFACE



BY STEVE PERRY




Part One

When you have mastered the Way of strategy, you can suddenly make your
body like a rock, and ten thousand things cannot touch you.
тАФMIYAMOTO MUSASHI

Therefore the best fortress is to be found in the love of the people, for
although you have fortresses, they will not save you if you are hated by the
people.
тАФMACHIAVELLI




ONE

DEATH CAME FOR him wearing a smile.
It came in the form of a trusted friend, a counselor with the Wall since the
dangerous years, so long past. Here was one of Marcus Jefferson Wall's best,
a man who was, in a galaxy where lying had become an art, a true artist of
spoken prevarication; a man who had fooled the best machinery the Confed
could devise; a master of verbal fugue. Always before, the lies had been
under Wall's direction, for his own purposes; now, however, the liar had
shifted his aim. Such a pity, Wall thought. Truly it was.
 "Ah," Wall said, "my old friend Cteel! Come, let me get you something.
Some dust? A flare of wine?"
The other man smiled, and nodded politely. "Perhaps a spiral or two of kik-
dust."
Wall rose from his orthopedia. The machinery whirred silently as he shifted
his weight, trying to accommodate his leaving. The man padded toward his
drug dispenser. It was a nice room, he knew. Big, lush, all the comforts of
true civilization. The floor was covered with handwoven carpet from the
Green Moon, fibers of bioengineered tutch wool dyed indigo and scarlet. It
was the most pleasing substance man had yet devised to walk upon barefoot.
The walls were hand-waxed persimmon wood three centimeters thickтАФ
overlaying, of course, a ferro-foam armor and zap fields. The ceiling was
hung with spider silk from the New Zealand Arachnida, formed into a
gossamer sheet that shined with a natural silver color. And the electronics,
well, certainly there were none finer. Wall could have had a servomech
deliver Cteel's amphetaminic, but he preferred to do it himself.
At the dispenser, Wall said, "Kik-dust. Variant P."