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

Wolf Time




WOLF TIME

Walter Jon Williams


Speakers in the hospital ceiling chimed a series of low, whispery, synthesized tones, tones scientifically
proven to be relaxing. Reese looked down at the boy in the hospital bed and felt her insides twist.

The boy was named Steward, and he'd just had a bullet removed that morning. In the last few days, mad
with warrior zen and a suicidal concept of personal honor, he'd gone kamikaze and blown up the whole
network. Griffith was dead, Jordan was dead, Spassky was dead, and nobody had stopped Steward until
everything in L.A. had collapsed entirely. He hadn't talked yet to the heat, but he would. Reese reached
for her gun. Her insides were still twisting.

Steward had been lied to and jacked over and manipulated without his knowing it. Mostly it had been his
friend Reese who had done it to him. She couldn't blame him for exploding when he finally figured out
what had happened.

And now this.

Reese turned off the IV monitor so it wouldn't bleep when he died, and then Steward opened his eyes.
She could see the recognition in his look, the knowledge of what was about to happen. She might have
known he wouldn't make it easy.

"Sorry," she said, and raised the gun. What the hell else could she say? Maybe we can still be friends,
after this is over?

Steward was trying to say something. She felt herself wring out again.

She shot him three times with her silenced pistol and left. The police guards didn't look twice at her
hospital coat and ID. Proper credentials had always been her specialty.

****

CYA. Reese headed for Japan under a backup identity. Credentials her strong suit, as always. On the
shuttle she drank a star beast and plugged her seat's interface stud into the socket at the base of her skull.
She closed her eyes and silently projected the latest scansheets onto the optical centers of her brain, and
her lips twisted in anger as for the first time she found out what had really gone down, what she'd been a
part of.

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