"Resnick, Mike - Oracle 3 - Prophet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

"You do?"
"Yeah. From this day forward, you're the Silicon Kid."
Neil smiled happily in the darkness. "I like that!"
"Somehow I thought you might," said Lomax.


4

Olympus was a rugged little world, filled with too many mountains and too little farmland, saltwater oceans that tended to produce tidal waves and freshwater lakes and rivers that tended to dry up every summer. At first view there was no reason why anyone should have wanted to settle there, let alone produce a sprawling megalopolis between two of the larger mountain ranges, but it happened that the planet was almost ideally located between the Democracy and that section of the Inner Frontier dominated by the Binder system. Originally it housed a single Tradertown, but as commerce grew between the Democracy and the worlds of the Inner Frontier, the Tradertown began growing in all directions -- including up -- and one day, without anyone knowing quite how it had happened, it had become a huge city encompassing almost two million humans and perhaps fifty thousand aliens of various races, a shipping and trading center of truly Homeric proportions. There were four spaceports, two orbiting hangars each capable of accommodating more than one thousand ships that were too big or too heavy to land on the planet's surface, and some forty square miles, just to the north of the city, for storing grain that was enroute to the Democracy.
The city was named, appropriately enough, Athens, and most of the major thoroughfares bore names taken from The Iliad and The Odyssey. It possessed many of the conveniences of the Democracy, but despite its size and affluence, it still retained more than a little of the feel of a Tradertown. Gaily costumed miners and gamblers rubbed shoulders with conservatively clad businessmen, grim-faced bounty hunters and killers inhabited the bars and drug-dens, entrepreneurs of all types were constantly scheming to share in some of the billions that sat in the vaults of two dozen major and minor banks.
"This is some place, this Olympus!" said the Silicon Kid as he and Lomax rode a slidewalk down one of the main thoroughfares. "Look at these buildings, Gravedancer!"
"They're just buildings," said Lomax with a shrug.
"You aren't impressed?"
"They blot out the sun." Lomax paused. "It looks like any other gateway world."
"Gateway world?"
"Between the Inner Frontier and the Democracy," answered Lomax. "There are about fifty of 'em."
"Well, I've never seen anything like this."
"One world's pretty much like the next," replied Lomax. "This one's a little warm for my taste. Could use a touch more gravity, too."
"I like the lighter gravity," enthused the Kid. "I feel like I'm floating." Suddenly he paused. "You have to make adjustments every time the gravity changes, right?"
Lomax nodded. "On a world like this, your tendency is to shoot too high."
"Yeah," mused the Kid. "I hadn't thought of that." Another pause. "Maybe I can come up with some chips that will make all the worlds feel the same to you."
"You come up with a chip like that and you'll never run out of friends," replied Lomax.
"Where are we going?" asked the Kid, watching a monorail race above them.
"To see where Jason Cole used to live."
"He's the guy with the laser in his finger?"
"That' s right," said Lomax.
"Then what?"
"Then I ask some questions." Lomax turned to the Silicon Kid. "You don't have to come along. We can make an arrangement to meet somewhere."
"And miss the chance of seeing you in action?" said the Kid watching a pair of silent hovercrafts race for a single landing space atop a nearby roof. "Not a chance."
"Not much action involved in asking questions.''
"What if they don't answer?"
Lomax stepped aside as two young boys raced past him, toy guns blazing. "Cole's dead. Why shouldn't they?"
"Maybe whoever he lived with will be just a little upset that you killed him," answered the Kid.
"I didn't kill him."
"Maybe they won't believe you," said the Kid. "After all, you're the Gravedancer."
Lomax grimaced. "If he lived with anyone, they must have known what kind of work he did." He lit a thin cigar. "In this business, if you go out often enough, there comes a time when you don't return. That's a given."
"I'll come along, anyway," said the Kid. "You just might need some help."
Lomax shrugged. "It's been known to happen."
The Kid frowned as they passed a multi-environmental hotel that seemed to specialize in chlorine-breathers. "You know," he said, "every time I think I've got you pegged, you come up with an answer that throws me."
"Oh?"
"You're the Gravedancer! You shouldn't want help from anybody."
"You see enough men get blown to bits and before long you find that you're willing to take all the help you can get," answered Lomax, checking each street sign as they came to it.
"Well, it seems wrong."
"I suppose it'd make a lousy video," agreed Lomax with an amused smile.
"It sure as hell would," agreed the Kid seriously.
"Welcome to the real world."
They rode in silence for a few more minutes, until Hector Boulevard crossed Helen Street. Lomax managed the change of slidewalks easily, but had to reach out and steady the Silicon Kid, who had never been on a slidewalk before and almost lost his balance.
"Thanks," muttered the Kid. "That'd be a hell of a way to get killed, my first day on a new world."
"Don't jump," Lomax cautioned. "Just step onto the thin strip of pavement between them with one foot, and then step onto the next slidewalk."
"Stupid way to travel."