"A. R. Yngve - Parry's Protocol" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yngve A. R)

format a pass-card for the doctor."

"Sure, Joyce. Could you please put your thumbprint on this scanner, Doc?"

While talking, the guard had taken out a small flat box from a cabinet and pressed
some buttons, like a man using a pocket calculator. A little white rectangle started
to flash at one end of the box; in a LED display Abram could see the text
"ACCESS CODE CONFIRMED---PLACE PRINT ON SENSOR SURFACE"
scroll past. He pressed his thumb on the box held forth by the guard, and the
gadget gave a beep.

"Thank you, that'll do," the guard said.

A larger box inside the cabinet, wired to the small scanner box, whizzed and
clicked, then spat out a new pass-card. The guard pulled out the card and handed it
to Abram -- it was still warm.

Joyce explained: "Since a year now, everyone going in and out of the main
building -- except the patients, of course -- has one of these 'smart cards'. When
you stick it into a scanner slot, the card gets electric power to 'read' the user's
thumbprint and compare it to the print in its memory chip. That means this card" --
she pointed at the card in his hand -- "only gives access when you use it... so take
care of it, and don't lose your thumb."

"The cameras at the entrance and the doors..." Abram began to ask.

"Those are infrareds," Mark fell in. "It turned out to be safer to identify people by
reading their thermal 'body-prints', after Parry had stolen a... er, Dr. Oregon could
explain it to you, sir."

Mark suddenly looked at Joyce with half-concealed embarrassment. Joyce Oregon
gave them both a secretive smile, but briefly.

"It's okay, Mark. Let's go up to my office, Dr. --"

"Just call me Abram, by all means. If I may call you by your first name..?"

Abram looked innocently into Joyce's black eyes, and she raised an ironic
eyebrow. A hint of a smile escaped her lips, before she calmly turned around and
walked toward a narrow staircase opposite the booth. Abram cast a questioning
glance at the guard -- but he was
already busy locking up the scanner equipment.

Dr. Abram Lemercier, fifty-three, paced up the stairs after the short, brown-
skinned woman, briefly displaying a breathless, boyish lack of dignity.




(To Chapter 3)