"Martha Soukup - Things Not Seen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Soukup Martha)

Things Not Seen
Martha Soukup
Her screen was slightly unbalanced toward green. It dulled reds, making it appear as if Dr. Herrera's face
was streaked with chocolate syrup. Ginnie Erickson glanced at the security robot, which squatted near
her hip, cabled into her workstation. "Hold it, please." The image froze. She hit a few keystrokes, until
the blood was vivid red. "Take it at half speed." Herrera's head moved forward a bit, as though he were
trying to peer through his gouged eyes, and he began to slump in his chair. "Quarter speed."

The viewpoint shifted crazily until Ralph Herrera filled the screen. DiagnosticsтАФblood pressure,
pulseтАФscrolled under the image of the dying scientist, measurements taken by the robot as it made itself
into a temporary heart-lung machine, hooked to Herrera's circulatory system and oxygenating his blood.

Too late. His brain was scrambled by the ice pick that had stabbed through his eyes. The security robot
was not equipped with an EEG, or it could have registered its charge's brain-death and saved itself some
trouble.

"Stop," Ginnie said. There was nothing striking left in the robot's memory until ten minutes later, when
Drobisch, the security chief, arrived. She might have continued in fast scan, but Drobisch was standing
behind her. She'd seen that part already. The digital recording would show his hasty arrival, shirttail
untucked, gun in hand. He would bend over the corpse and say, "Shit. Damn it, Herrera, if you've cost
me my jobтАФ" It did not seem politic to play forward to that point.

"So what's wrong with the stupid machine?" Drobisch asked.

"I don't know. Give me some time."

"Time? Time?" She suspected he was related to someone, somewhere. Surely there was no other reason
a twit like him could hold his job.

"It's a very complicated stupid machine." She turned to the robot. "You're a complicated machine, aren't
you?"

"Yes," said the robot, its pleasant voice coming from a speaker in its chest. She'd known the guy who
recorded its core model vocabulary. He said it had taken a week, but the results were worth it, easy
enough on the ears that she'd dated the voice's original for two months. She was only slightly miffed that
in her six years of working with robots, no one had ever suggested her voice would make a good model.

"So simplify it," said Drobisch. "The stupid thing says Herrera came in, sat down, and suddenly had
blood and eyeballs all over himself. It's a stupid waste of money. And it's useless to the company until we
figure out what's wrong with it."

"The back of my neck is warm enough, though, thanks," she said. Drobisch stared at her. "Could you
stop breathing down it for a while? You're making me itch."

"I think I'll watch."

"Then could you tell me why the company is into investigating this thing? Why don't you leave it to the
cops?"

"It's company business."