"Walter Jon Williams - Videostar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

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Videostar
by Walter Jon Williams
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1
Ric could feel the others closing in. They were circling outside the Falcon
Quarter as if on midsummer thermals, watching the Cadillacs with glittering
raptor eyes, occasionally swooping in to take a little nibble at Cadillac
business, Cadillac turf, Cadillac sources. Testing their own strength as well
as the Cadillac nerves, applying pressure just to see what would happen, find
out if the Cadillacs still had it in them to respond...
Ric knew the game well: he and the other Cadillacs had played it five
years before, up and down the streets and datanets of the Albaicin, half-grown
kids testing their strength against the gangs entrenched in power, the
Cruceros, the Jerusalem Rangers, the Piedras Blancas. The older gangs seemed
slow, tentative, uncertain, and when the war came the Cadillacs won in a
matter of days: the others were too entrenched, too visible, caught in a
network of old connections, old associations, old manners ... the young
Cadillacs, coming up out of nowhere, found their own sources, their own
products and connections, and in the end they and their allies gutted the old
boys' organization, absorbing what was still useful and letting the rest die
along with the remnants of the Cruceros, Rangers, and Blancas, the bewildered
survivors who were still looking for a remaining piece of turf on which to
make their last stand.
At the time Ric had given the Cadillacs three years before the same
thing started happening to them, before their profile grew too high and the
next generation of snipers rose in confidence and ability. The Cadillacs had
in the end lasted five years, and that wasn't bad. But, Ric thought, it was
over.
The other Cadillacs weren't ready to surrender. The heat was mounting,
but they thought they could survive this challenge, hold out another year or
two. They were dreaming, Ric thought.
During the hot dog days of summer, people began to die. Gunfire echoed
from the pink walls of the Alhambra. Networks disintegrated. Allies
disappeared. Ric made a proposition to the Cadillacs for a bank to be shared
with their allies, a fund to keep the war going. The Cadillacs in their
desperation agreed.
Ric knew then it was time to end it, that the Cadillacs had lost
whatever they once had. If they agreed to a proposition like this, their nerve
and their smarts were gone.
So there was a last meeting, Ric of the Cadillacs, Mares of the
Squires, Jacob of the Last Men. Ric walked into the meeting with a radar-aimed
dart gun built into the bottom of his briefcase, each dart filled with a toxin
that would stop the heart in a matter of seconds. When he walked out it was
with a money spike in his pocket, a stainless steel needle tipped with liquid
crystal. In the heart of the crystal was data representing over eighty
thousand Seven Moons dollars, ready for deposit into any electric account into
which he could plug the needle.