"Walter Jon Williams - Metropolitan - 02 - City On Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

The meter, Aiah notices, is still running. She points this out to the driver, but he affects to be too busy with the engine to notice.
He tries to start the engine and fails. Aiah points out the meter is still running, but the driver starts kicking the motor and screaming.
It's a chonah, Aiah thinks. The driver's a confidence rigger and there probably isn't anything really wrong with the engine.
If she were home she'd know what to do. But the fact she's a stranger in this place makes her hesitate.
Finally Aiah steps forward and turns off the cab's meter. The driver is stern.
"Can't do that, lady. It's government regulation. Only the driver can touch the meter.Ф
He steps forward to turn it on again. She keeps her hand over the button. "Start the engine first," she says. "Then you can start the meter.Ф
The driver shrugs. With showy, large gestures, he tinkers with the engine again. Puts the cover on. Starts it without so much as a cough.
Aiah is entertained. She's a Barkazil, one of the Cunning People. Her ancestors have rigged chonahs for thousands of years. This sort of thing is in her blood.
The pontoons and barges are old in this district, layered with barnacles beneath the waterline. The buildings on the pontoons are old as well, and as layered, new structures barnacled atop the old, until the form and shape and function of the original building has been completely obscured.
When she arrives at her hotel, she tries to calculate exchange rates, and gives the driver what she thinks is the correct amount in Gunalaht dalders. She knows, from the driver's sudden bright grin, that she's overpaid. Suddenly he's pressing a plastic business card into her hand.
"My name is Callaq, miss! Please call at any time! I will show you the sights, the Aerial Palace, the place where all the battles were fought, anything!Ф
"Maybe.Ф
"Please call! I'll take you anywhere!Ф
"Thank you, Callaq.Ф
She carries her bag up corroded marble steps slippery with sea slime. Beggars hold out cupped hands on the stairs. From the top she turns to look back at this strange metropolis, sees the taxi churning away, an old moored tugboat that probably hasn't moved in years and is flying a string of laundry, a flock of scabrous waterfowl staring at her with agate eyes.
And then, in the air above the canal, there forms a pattern, lines and colors interlinking, the pattern flowing like water. ... It bursts so swiftly in the sky, like a flower opening in time-lapse photography, that she can only catch a fragment of the wholeness, a curve, a maze, a wonderment. Aiah stares openmouthed.
"The Dreaming Sisters," says a strange male voice.
The colors fade, leaving an imprint on Aiah's vision, which glows for a few seconds like the afterburn of a photographer's flash.
She turns to see who was speaking, her tongue poised to ask more questions; but it's a businessman, sallow and sleek, and from the glint of his eye she can tell he'd like nothing more than a frolic with a strange woman, so she merely nods, then takes her bag indoors.
NEW GOVERNMENT CALLS FOR EXILES TO RETURN"WE NEED YOUR SKILLS TO REBUILD CARAQUI," SAYS TRIUMVIR DRUMBETHThe hotel is an ancient place that has seen better days. Prostitutes cruise the lobby, either shockingly young or shockingly aged. Ribbed plastic sheeting protects old, broken tiles that were once bright with abstract designs dating from the old Geoform movement. Aiah's room has a lovely plastered ceiling with a life-size figure of the immortal Khomak brandishing his assault rifle overhead and riding that fabulous animal, the sea horse . . . but from the sea horse hangs a wire, and on the end of the wire is a naked bulb. The bed has a cheap steel frame and the bedsprings squeak. There is no other furniture. Over the sink hangs a sign: Hot Water Available 05:00-07:00.
It's 10:31, according to Aiah's watch. She guesses she's missed her bath for the day.
There is a communications jack but no telephone. Aiah finds she can rent one by the hour and does so. It's an unusual piece, with a pair of heavy brass earphones and a trumpet-shaped mouthpiece braced up in front of her face by a butter-smooth brass prop in the shape of a human arm.
Constantine, she knows, is Minister of Resources in the new government. She calls the ministry in Government Harbor, but all they will do is take a message, so she phones the Aerial Palace and asks to be connected to his suite. She can't even get anyone who will promise to take a message to him.
"Not unless you're on the list," she's told.
"Can I speak to Mr. Khoriak, then?Ф
"Who's he?Ф
"He's a member of Constantine's suite." One of his guards.
"I'll see.Ф
Aiah waits for ten minutes, hoping that Khoriak wasn't killed in the fighting.
"This is Khoriak.Ф
Relief pours through Aiah, relieving tension she hadn't realized she'd possessed.
"Khoriak, this is Aiah. Aiah from Jaspeer. You remember?Ф
"Of course.Ф
Of course. Idiot. It had only been a few days since she'd seen him.
"I'm in Caraqui. Hotel Oceanic. I would like to see the Metropolitan Constantine, but I can't seem to reach him.Ф
"I'll tell him.Ф
Half an hour later, she's on Constantine's private launch.
Fast work. She's been in Caraqui less than two hours.
TRIUMVIR PARQ CALLS FOR DAY OF PRAYERDALAVANS TO FAST ON FRIDAYThe launch seems to have been liberated from the Kere-maths or their supporters: the hull is a shiny black polymer composite with silver trimЧnot chrome but actual silver, kept bright by the endless polishing of the crew, or perhaps through some hermetic process.
There is a deep whine as the boat accelerates, hydrogen burning through its turbines. It clearly has a lot of power to spare.
The captain is a black-skinned Cheloki, a newcomer. He drives the boat well but doesn't know the territory: he constantly refers to the map pinned to the chart table next to the wheel. There is a soldier who places a fine white wine and a basket of sandwiches atop the table on the fantail. He is clearly uncomfortable in the role of servantЧless than a week ago he was probably in combatЧbut he's gracious enough, all things considered. Aiah realizes she hasn't eaten since second shift yesterday, and she tries not to bolt the sandwiches.
The sleek motorcraft arrows neatly through the green water. The pontoons that loom on either side are painted with fading slogans and the images of dead Keremaths. Our family is your familyЧthe slogan arches above dead, flaking faces. Aiah finds herself looking for dolphinsЧshe had met one once, and spoken with him, and she knows they inhabit these waters. But no pale dolphins break the surface of the water.
Aiah is startled to see a large tram car float overhead along a set of cables. The green car, with its rounded, aerodynamic corners, is big as a bus, and obviously serves the same purpose.
Practical, Aiah thinks. It avoids congestion on the bridges, or building expensive tunnels underwater for pneuma and trackline transport.
Images of the Blue Titan and the Lynxoid Brothers brighten the sky, a plasm advert for the new chromoplay. .. .
The buildings grow nicer as the boat approaches the Aerial Palace: expensive apartments, tinted glass and jutting balconies with fancy gingerbread scrollwork on the rails, and broad-shouldered office buildings crouching on their pontoons like animals ready to spring. Buildings don't reach as high here as in Jaspeer, because it would make the pontoons top-heavy.
And then the boat passes through a battlefield, and the contrast is shocking: a series of squat blackened buildings, roofs fallen in, piles of rubble spilled in the street. Barges rock silently at the quayside, filled with slick plastic body bags. Priests with surgical gauze over their lower faces process the dead as they are brought from the rubble.
Come to mourn! a sound truck cries. Come to mourn the dead!The Burning Man had appeared here, a firestorm of plasm in human shape. He had been fighting for Constantine, trying to stop a government counterattack; but the mage had been inexperienced and everything had gone out of control.
Twenty-five thousand dead. Including the mage. Several thousand soldiers. The rest civilians.