"Robert Reed - The Hormone Jungle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

THERE are a bunch of whores in the back, playing edible chess. Steward can see
them by the light of their big bright skullcaps, and he hears them chattering
and then hears them turn quiet, waiting for someone to make a move. Then some
of them start to cheer and clap. One of the pawns gives a high squeaky scream,
and one of the whores laughs, saying, "You're mine. All mine."
Steward sits alone at a little round table, one of his big hands holding
his glass while he sips and thinks that he's dry enough and the rain has quit
and maybe he should go now. He thinks about getting home. He thinks how he
hasn't been busy enough lately because he sure isn't tired and maybe he should
go somewhere besides home. Get some work done. Do those boring chores he's
been putting off till whenever. Like running a check of his inventories. Or
testing his security systems for flaws. Or maybe just spending a few hours
with his high-placed contacts, sniffing out any news that might mean something
to him. '
He hears the front door open and close, then he turns and sees a girl come
inside. She's a strange girl. He knows it at once and yet he has trouble
deciding why. From a distance, through the pasty smoke and gloom, she seems
pretty enough. With big eyes she surveys the bar while she moves halfway in
Steward's direction. Another pawn screams, and she hears it and jerks and
watches the whores for a second, something showing in her face. She's wearing
a sheer white dress with precious little underneath and expensive white shoes
and double strands of Garden pearls around her perfect neck, and both hands
hold a purse made of some living snow-white leather. It's a wardrobe for
casual wealth. She's much too much for this kind of place. One glance is
enough to prove her wrongness. Even the whores and patrons turn down the
volume a notch, watching her settle at a table close to Steward. The barmaid
comes and the girl orders a drink. She's too much. Steward hears a dusky
voice. He sees something in the barmaid's face. What is it? Then he takes a
long deep breath, feeling a hollowness high in his chest and smelling a
delicate musty scent that makes his head wheel. Something is going to happen,
he thinks. Something tells him something is coming. Wait. Just wait.
There are a dozen patrons, tops. They're a scrubbed and liquored lot, all
Terran, of all shades, wearing rumpled clothes and uncertain smiles. The
whores not playing chess are sitting with them and drinking with them and
laughing when they think it'll do them some good. Steward looks at all the
faces, measuring moods, and then he looks above them and takes in the bright
old-fashioned holos advertising beer, and the swirling smokes rising through
the holos and toward the high-arched roof. Buildings in the Old Quarter are
dead and durable and typically more than a thousand years old. This particular
building is made from dead woods commercially perfect and tarnished steel
pulled into elegant shapes, and the bright green moonlight pours in through
the glass roof and softens everything it touches. Normally this place is lit
up by its own lights. Steward has been here with clients and with people who
never quite became clients. It must have been the storm, he thinks. Someone
must have turned off the lights so they could watch the storm pass, and now
they've forgotten to turn them back on. Half the sky is eclipsed by a tall
stone building. A line of floaters cross the other half-saucer-shaped craft
carrying their passengers from place to place-and he notices a rainboy higher
still, its bright body streaking towards the Gulf. He breathes and thinks how