"Tad Williams - Otherland 3 - Mountain of Black Glass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Tad)

appear and demand that he return with them. Weary and confused, he is about to surrender, but as
they come closer he sees that Finch and Mullet no longer appear even remotely human, and he flees
into the golden light.
In the 21st Century, the oldest and perhaps richest man in the world is named _Felix
Jongleur_. His physical body is all but dead, and he spends his days in a virtual Egypt he has
built for himself, where he reigns over all as _Osiris_, the god of Life and Death. His chief
servant, both in the virtual and real world, is a half-Aboriginal serial murderer who has named
himself _Dread_, who combines a taste for hunting humans with a strange extrasensory ability to
manipulate electronic circuitry that allows him to blank security cameras and otherwise avoid
detection. Jongleur discovered Dread years before, and helped to nurture the young man's power,
and has made him his chief assassin.
Jongleur/Osiris is also the leader of a group of some of the world's most powerful and wealthy
people, the _Grail Brotherhood_, who have built for themselves a virtual universe unlike any
other, the Grail Project, also called Otherland. (This latter name comes from an entity known as
the "Other" which has some important involvement with the Grail Project network--an artificial
intelligence or something even stranger. This powerful force is largely in the control of
Jongleur, but it is the only thing in the world that the old man fears.)
The Grail Brotherhood are arguing among themselves, upset that the mysterious Grail Project is
so slow to come to fruition. They have all invested billions in it, and waited a decade or more of
their lives. Led by the American technology baron _Robert Wells_, they grow restive about
Jongleur's leadership and his secrets, like the nature of the Other.
Jongleur fights off a mutiny, and orders his minion Dread to prepare a neutralization mission
against one of the Grail members who has already left the Brotherhood.
Back in South Africa, Renie and her student !Xabbu are shaken by their narrow escape from the
virtual nightclub known as Mister J's, and more certain than ever that there is some involvement
between the club and her brother's coma. But when she examines the data-object the mysterious
figure gave her, it opens into an amazingly realistic image of a golden city. Renie and !Xabbu
seek the help of Renie's former professor, _Dr. Susan Van Bleeck_, but she is unable to solve the
mystery of the city, or even tell for certain if it is an actual place. The doctor decides to
contact someone else she knows for help, a researcher named _Martine Desroubins_. But even as
Renie and the mysterious Martine make contact for the first time, Dr. Van Bleeck is attacked in
her home and savagely beaten, and all her equipment destroyed. Renie rushes to the hospital, but
after pointing Renie in the direction of a friend, Susan dies, leaving Renie both angry and
terrified.
Meanwhile Orlando Gardiner, the ill teenager in America, is hot in pursuit of the golden city
that he saw while online, so much so that his friend Fredericks begins to worry about him. Orlando
has always been odd--he has a fascination with death-experience simulations that Fredericks can't
understand--but even so this seems excessive. When Orlando announces they are going to the famous
hacker-node known as TreeHouse, Fredericks' worst fears are confirmed.
TreeHouse is the last preserve of everything anarchic about the net, a place where no rules
dictate what people can do or how they must appear. But although Orlando finds TreeHouse
fascinating, and discovers some unlikely allies in the form of a group of hacker children named
the _Wicked Tribe_ (whose virtual guise is a troop of tiny winged yellow monkeys) his attempts to
discover the origins of the golden city vision arouse suspicion, and he and Fredericks are forced
to flee.
Meanwhile Renie and !Xabbu, with the help of Martine Desroubins, have also come to TreeHouse,
in pursuit of an old, retired hacker named _Singh_, Susan Van Bleeck's friend. When they find him,
he tells them that he is the last of a group of specialist programmers who built the security