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

The other faery woman was even more lovely than Viridia, with spiky natural lime hair in a punk style
and a slender, willowy shape. Her face was all delicate features, boosted with extraordinary silver and
turquoise makeup in the faery equivalent of Goth. 'I'm Poppy,' she said, with a dazzling smile. 'Hey, how
are ya? Nice to see more girls around. This place is strictly over-testosteroned, if ya know what I mean.
Did you see Zal's letters? They're utterly hideoso. Hey Zal,' and she took his arm as he passed her and
air-kissed him in the direction of his lips - a gesture he matched with an elegant mwa, millimetres from
contact. 'Catch ya later.'
 Lila watched Poppy glide just above the floor in that floaty faery way, as though she was as light as
thistledown. Viridia and Sand made slightly more effort to stay floorbound, but not much. Their wings
were not visible in Otopia, but Lila found that they created a slight buzz of
interference with her internal comms, as certain kinds of faery often did. She'd have to be careful around
them because they'd made her slow to react.
Zal did some complicated gang-like Hi-Five greeting with the others in the band. From letting Lila
make her own way with the guileless bonhomie of the faeries he actually reached back and drew her
forward into the studio proper to meet the humans.
'Guys, this is my new shadow, Lila. Lila doesn't like rock, and she doesn't like elves.'
'Hey,' said the bass player, dark and fresh-faced Luke who was, Lila judged, twenty-five going on
fifteen. His rap sheet included two counts of Class B alchemical possession. He gave her a grin and a
heavy squeeze on her hand. 'Is she like, going everywhere with us?'
'What does she like?' asked the girl DJ, giving Lila a competitive and warning-off stare from under the
brim of her battered top hat.
'Violence,' Lila said sweetly in her best Swiss-finishing-school voice. She withdrew her hand from
Luke's hold. He winked at her.
Zal laughed.
The DJ relaxed and nodded, her stiff-faced initial reaction softening into a smile. 'Whatever.'
Luke said, 'Don't like elves? Are you what, some kind of racist?'
'I love elves,' Lila said in exactly the same tone as before, her smile fixed. 'And I love rock.'
Jelly's voice broke in over the intercom. 'Can we get on with business before the rental of these fine
additional musicians destroys all potential of my third house purchase in New Malibu? Stations people.
Instruments. Connections.'
Lila retreated to Jelly's side of the glass wall and sat down beside him at the mixing desk. She
detected no hidden enmities in the band. Far from it, they were all perfectly easy with one another. A
quick surveil-lance of the rest of the people here gave her no more evidence of any internal rivalries at
work. She settled down to watch them do their stuff. They were going to record a Mode-X cover of
"The Ace of Spades'.
Lila, like Jelly, had no faith that Zal could ever convincingly sing tracks like that. She'd never heard an
elf sing anything other than chant or a peculiarly prissy version of 'Silent Night'. She didn't want to wait
around either. Now that she was satisfied that the studio was secure, and with two other guards on duty
at the doors, she made an
excuse of visiting the Ladies Room and took her chance to slip out in order to investigate the rest of the
building.
Poppy had been quite right when she said that the letters sent to Zal care of Ozo Records had been
hideoso. They were also, as far as Incon were concerned, of possible relevance to national security.
Although some of them were crackpot in nature, hating Zal for his race, for his taste in music or for his
betrayal of all matters precious to Alfheim, those were easy to deal with: from elves or from humans they
went straight in the bin. But the dangerous ones that had sparked Lila's operation weren't like that.
These few were letters that had been delivered on magical vellum, and what they said changed
according to who read them. When the manager of the fan club had opened them they read like regular
fan mail. The senders had even included cheques to join through special promotional rates promised
through an ad in Vanity Fair which had accompanied a big article on Zal. But in Zal's hands the words