"Scott Westerfield - The Movements Of Her Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westerfeld Scott)

oceans were also mined from this system'sasteroid belt. Soon, everyone here
would be incrementally richer as the oceanplanet pulled its mineral wealth
from the Expansion common market. The marketswould edge upward across the
board.Isaah began to place his bets.The dark-skinned boy looked down upon the
asteroid field with a painedexpression. Rathere watched the way his long bangs
straightened, then curled toencircle his cheeks again when he raised his head.
But her stomach clenched whenshe looked down through the transparent floor;
the party was on the lowest levelof a spin-gravitied ring, and black infinity
seemed to be pulling at her throughthe glassene window. The AI lovingly
recorded the parameters of this unfamiliarvertigo."More champers, Darien?"
asked the fattest, oldest boy at the party."You can just make out a mining
ship down there," the dark-skinned boy answered."Oh, dear," said the fat boy.
"Upper-class guilt. And before lunchtime."The dark-skinned boy shook his head.
"It's just that seeing those poor wretchesdoesn't make me feel like
drinking."The fat boy snorted."This is what I think of your poor little
miners," he said, upending the bottle.A stream of champagne gushed and then
sputtered from the bottle, spread fizzingon the floor. The other party-goers
laughed, politely scandalized, then murmuredappreciatively as the floor
cleaned itself, letting the champagne pass throughto the hard vacuum on the
other side, where it flash-froze (shattered by its ownair bubbles), then
floated away peacefully in myriad, sunlit galaxies.There were a few moments of
polite applause.The boy Darien looked at Rathere woundedly, as if hoping that
she, an outsider,might come to his aid.The anguish in his dark, beautiful face
sent a shiver through her, a tremor thatresonated through every level of the
Al."Come on, dammit!" she subvocalized."Two seconds," the minder's voice
reassured.The ring was home to the oligarchs who controlled the local system's
mineralwealth. A full fifteen years old now, Rathere had fallen into the
company oftheir pleasure-obsessed children, who never stopped staring at her
exotic skinand hair, and who constantly exchanged droll witticisms. Rathere,
hersocialization limited to her father and the doting AI, was unfamiliar with
theart of banter. She didn't like being intimidated by locals. The frustration
wassimply and purely unbearable."The price of that champagne could have bought
one of those miners out of debtpeonage," Darien said darkly."Just the one?"
asked the fat boy, looking at the label with mock concern.The group laughed
again, and Darien's face clouded with another measure ofsuffering."Now!"
Rathere mind-screamed. "I hate that fat guy!"The AI hated him, too.The search
cascaded across its processors, the decompressed data of itslibraries
clobbering astrogation calculations it had performed only hoursbefore. That
didn't matter. It would be weeks before Isaah would be ready todepart, and the
exigencies of conversation did not allow delay. The library dataincluded
millennia of plays, novels, films, interactives. To search themquickly, the Al
needed vast expanses of memory space."Maybe when my little golden shards of
champagne drift by, some miner willthink, 'I could've used that money,'" the
fat boy said almost wistfully. "Butthen again, if they thought about money at
all, would they be so far in debt?"The fat boy's words were added to the
search melange, thickening it by acritical degree. A dozen hits appeared in
the next few milliseconds, and the AIchose one quickly."There is only one
class...""...that thinks more about money than the rich," repeated
Rathere.There was a sudden quiet throughout the party, the silence of waiting
for more."And that is the poor," she said.Darien looked at Rathere