"John Ringo - Sister Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

attendees were officially diplomats, the interests they really represented were one or another Darhel
business group. There were a few more celebrities than would have been in attendance before, outside of
fund-raisers. As artists had throughout history, they clustered where the opportunities for patronage
were. Whatever else they were, the Darhel were not stupid. They understood the value of good public
relations. People in the entertainment industry knew the value of a fedcred. As a business arrangement, it
generally worked out rather well. In show business, people who didn't think so tended to be conspicuous
by their absence.


Wow. That's the first time I've seen a champagne fountain done in real life. Clever to have
floated it over the water garden.Jewels and gold lam├й had enjoyed something of a revival. The room
was alive with potted trees and draped greenery. Floating lights resembling mythical will o' the wisps
made the ballroom look like something out of a materialistic reinterpretation of A Midsummer Night's
Dream.


Cally shrugged. She was a realist. As long as a collaborator didn't actually get innocent people killed,
he'd have to be into some pretty heavy-duty stuff to merit her professional attention. She didn't think of
operations like the one tonight as professional assignments. Sending her out to steal was a little like having
an attorney take out the office trash. If your employer asked it, and cash flow was tight, and you could
spare the time from your real job, you did it. But it wasn't her real job. Cally O'Neal's real job was killing
people. And once she'd thought she wasn't bothered by that at all. Now she knew she was, sometimes.
And that it was better that way.


As she eeled her way between one overly large matron and a rather stick-like pruny one, Cally couldn't
help observing the effects of bad rejuv jobs from incomplete drug sets.Okay, so there areworse things
than backaches and blouses that gap at the buttons.


" . . . and so my therapist said not to worry, Martin's just entering a third childhood, andI said I'd had
enough of this midlife crisis crap the first time and . . ."


There are definitely worse things.She snagged a glass from a tray carried by a balding,
forty-something man in an ill-fitting tux.Including being stuck in a dead-end job like waiting on these
bastards. She jumped as a hand groped her butt and glanced back to see a man who looked like a
seventeen-year-old geek in a tuxedo disappearing into the crowd with his matronly wife on his arm.Case
in point.


A slim socialite with the tight face characteristic of good old-fashioned plastic surgery caught her arm.
Cally suppressed her reflexes, turning a blinding but polite smile on the woman.


"Gail? Is thatyou ? Why the rumors said you weren't due back for at least another two weeks. It looks
fabulous ." The woman chattered at her, not pausing to wait for a response, "Wheredid you get the full
set, you naughty girl, you. Oh, gawd, and the boobs lookgreat ! A bit over the top, perhaps, but you
always were the drama queen, weren't you."