"Kate Wilhelm - Death Qualified" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

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Death Qualified: A Mystery Of Chaos

By: Kate Wilhelm

Synopsis:

What's the link between a powerful mind-altering computer program and two murders in the
Oregon woods? Seven years ago Lucas Kendricks deserted his young family and took off for
mathematician Emil Frobisher's research project in Colorado. Now, after one day's warning--he ordered
a monster computer to be sent to his old address--he's back, and then, moments later, he's dead, along
with a young woman he gave a lift to only a few hours before. The police think Lucas raped and killed
the hitchhiker and was shot down by his tiny, sharpshooting wife Nell; but defense attorney Barbara
Holloway, needled by her estranged father into coming back to him and the law (she'd been on the run
from both for five years after a dose of professional disillusionment) is convinced that Lucas's death had
more to do with the mysterious men who followed him from Colorado. Taking on her share of cliches--
alliance with her curmudgeonly, reluctantly supportive father; opposition from prosecutor/former lover
Tony DeAngelo; romance with mathematician Mike Dinesen (whom she's called in to make sense of the
connections Lucas had with Frobisher, psychiatrist Ruth Brandywine, and computer expert Walter
Schumaker)--Barbara delves into those blank seven years, and comes up with answers that are even
scarier than the questions: a set of the most user-unfriendly computer disks in literature.

Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Edward N. Lorenz

They always called him Tom. The maintenance crew, the doctors, everyone called him that, and
although he knew it was not really his name, he responded. Tom do this, do that. Tom come here, help
with this. Sometimes he could almost think of another name for himself, but it never seemed to finish
forming in his mind. It started--a thought, an idea, an impulse to say a different name, not to look
around when they said Tom--but then he was swept by terror and it vanished again. Good morning
Tom. How are you? Any more episodes, any dreams? Here's your medicine. That's a good boy. Go
on to work now. See you in the morning Tom.

He lived in a small apartment on the grounds. Sometimes he made his meals there, but most of the
time he ate in the cafeteria. He had a meal ticket. Good morning Tom. Bacon, eggs. What'll it be?
From the cafeteria to the doctor's office. From the doctor's office to the maintenance office. Out on the
grounds, sometimes cleaning up in the buildings, running the waxer, or carrying out trash. He liked
waxing best of the inside work, but he liked to work on the grounds best of all. Weeding, spreading
mulch, riding the mower, making long, sweeping patterns in the grass that smelled like a memory. Once
they made him repair some windows, and he had hated that. Looking in through the glass, like seeing
into a separate world that was not his world and was not even real, had made him edgy. It was not that
he was afraid of windows, he had told the doctor; it was that the windows were wrong. That wasn't how
it was.


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