"Sean Williams - The Perfect Gun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Sean)

anywhere."
"Perhaps not. I am searching civil records for her movements to see if she has
crossed any official paths since then." I waited for an eternity while he
thought silently to his toys. Then: "Yes. I have her."
I almost kissed him. "Where?"
"Unless the data has misled me, she appears to be home."
"Her home?"
"Working on her computer as we speak."
I swallowed my excitement. "It could be a trap."
"Quite possibly." The Zealot opened his red eye and pinned me under its
glowing stare.
 I had little choice. Standing, I shrugged out of the overcoat, preparing to
relieve myself of the cloak as payment for his services.
"No." The Zealot raised his hand. "Give it to me after. I can wait a day or
two."
"Thanks, but I don't like to owe you."
"I know." The Zealot smiled. "I don't like you to owe me either. But life gets
boring here at times, looking out at the world and never acting. A little
involvement does wonders, sometimes."
I smiled back, my nervousness returning now that I had a definite direction if
not an actual plan. Grateful both for his generosity and his confidence, I put
the overcoat back on. "Okay. I'd better get moving, then."
"Wait. Don't forget this." The Zealot picked up the PDA and gave it back to
me. "Replay your recording of Derringer's death, carefully, and it will tell
you something."
"How do you know that?"
The Zealot's smile widened. "I lifted it from your PC several hours ago."
I should have guessed. Raising the PDA in a brisk wave, I headed back through
his security airlock and out into the night.

Incongruous as it sounds, I hailed a taxi to take me the rest of the way to
Marilyn's house. I needed to rest, for one, and to avoid public scrutiny, for
two. The open streets made me nervous, knowing that there might be other
assassins looking for me. Every casual glance made me flinch.
So I caught a cab and paid cash in advance, plus a generous tip. To avoid the
driver seeing the cloak, I sat in the rear seat. After a minute of restless
staring at streets flowing by and itching where the fabric of the cloak rubbed
through my clothes, I took the PDA out of my pocket and followed the Zealot's
final words of advice.
The recording of Derringer's death lasted less than five minutes. I skimmed
through it twice with the volume down, but saw nothing new. With the volume
up, likewise. And there was that song again, to annoy the hell out of me,
right when I needed it. Thinking about the real Derringer, and his cloned
savant, one line in particular stood out:
The Perfect Gun is neither my shadow, nor my double,
nor my half, nor another myself . . .
Which was curiously appropriate, but not enough to genuinely prick my
interest. The fifth time I played it through was just a formality; I'd already
given up hope of finding anything new. The recording rolled on to the end
while I stared out the window, almost choking on frustration.