"Justina Robson - Quantum Gravity 01 - Keeping it Real" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robson Justina)

and barely raised an eyebrow at either Lila's gender or her size, so perhaps she wasn't all bad.
'Would you like to see the house first?' Jolene offered, glancing at her watch.
'No thanks,' Lila said. 'I know the layout.'
'And the staff and the grounds and what they eat for breakfast, I suppose,' Jolene said, smiling. 'In that
case I understand it's time you were at work. Is that bike the only vehicle you brought?' She peered
anxiously across the vast hallway and through the door at Lila's Kawasaki.
'Elves won't travel in Faraday cages,' Lila said, 'so that rules out cars, trains and planes. I don't travel
on horseback, and it beats walking.'
'So, you have done some homework,' Jolene nodded, satisfied. 'I'll go and get him.'
'It's okay, I'll go,' Lila said, stepping around her. As Jolene looked puzzled she added, 'Our offices sent
you a ring, which you gave him to wear. It's connected to our private network through secure branches
not connected to the Otopia Tree. I could find him in the middle of a Bears game at Alton Park. Not that
he'd be caught dead there.' She hesitated but Jolene didn't smile at this efficient sidestepping of Otopia's
global internet. Instead the woman's nervousness returned.
'I really wish this wasn't necessary Ms Black,' she said, 'I hope you don't take these threats as lightly
as you speak of them.'
'I don't,' Lila said. She regretted her tone as she walked away. Showing some small weakness in front
of Jolene would have gained her more sympathy. Now the woman was faintly antagonised by her.
The hall gave way to several corridors and stairways. Lila went up to the second floor and through a
maze of meandering ways to where a room the size of her entire apartment looked out through a glass
wall to the ocean, giving a superb view. She couldn't see anybody in it, only a set of pale sofas, a
seemingly random assortment of plants in pots, and a coat laid over a straight-backed chair. Very faintly
from somewhere she could hear Stevie Wonder singing 'Blame It On The Sun'. Otherwise the house was
silent.
She walked to where her augmented and automated senses told her Zal was. The Doublesafe ring was
on the chair, beside the coat. Lila glanced at it with annoyance, verging on anger, but curbed the feeling
quickly and concentrated instead on the beauty of the coat. It was elvish-made, of tightly woven raw silk,
sparely decorated with magical sigils that were so old they no longer bore any scent or colour of their
own. The coat had been bleached by the sun. Only the inside showed its once true shade of crimson.
The outside was a dull reddish clay, worn to white in places.
Lila touched the hem of one sleeve as she looked around more carefully. The fabric softened between
her fingers and she let it go quickly, only then realising the fact that the feeling that was nibbling away at
her insides was fear. She hadn't seen anything elvish since the day she was last completely human. She
had gone to some lengths to avoid hearing Zal and his band, or any other elvish sound. She would
have been content never to know anything of them ever again. She was glad of the processor that filtered
her dreams. She did not want to meet the near-immortal she was charged to preserve with her brief life.
She didn't want to touch his coat.
It was at this moment that the fineness of her hearing became more highly attuned. It was not Stevie
singing his old song. It was somebody preternaturally quiet who was standing in the shadows, not more
than a body's length from her. It was Zal.
Lila made herself turn very slowly, lest she look surprised. Her heart almost burst beneath the control
of her Al-self's attempt to regulate it. 'There you are,' she said lightly. 'I'm Lila Black, your bodyguard.'
And she realised as soon as she spoke that she had foolishly given her real name, not the pretend name
of the identity she had been meant to assume.
The flare of her anger fizzed with a curious tang like the citrus twist in a sparkling drink as she
acknowledged her mistake. Oh wait, that couldn't have been the zing of wild magic, could it? Couldn't
have been the onset of a Game? Elves, humans and Games were notorious . . . the idea chilled her, but it
was too late now. No, it was too faint. It couldn't be anything more than her imagination.
Zal had stopped singing as she noticed him standing there in plain view. He was exactly her height so
they stood eye to eye as her anger stung her. She thought he looked slightly surprised but Lila couldn't