"Timothy Zahn - Night Train to Rigel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

And found myself looking at a digitized photo of myself.
I stared at it, the back of my neck starting to tingle. The! photo was mine,
the name and ID number printed below it 1 were mine, and if the thumbprint
wasn't mine it was a damn close copy.
Long experience had taught me that it wasn't a good idea to be caught in the
vicinity of a dead body, especially one as freshly dead as this. I took a
minute anyway to go through the kid's other pockets.
It was a waste of a perfectly good minute. He had no ID, no credit tags, no
handkerchief, no pocketknife, no unpaid bills, no letters from home. Besides
the ticket folder, all he had was I a single cash stick with a hundred
ninety dollars left on it. From behind me came the sound of chattering
voices, and I turned to see a party of four impeccably dressed young people
emerging from the New Pallas for a night on the town. Casually, I stood up and
stepped past the crumpled figure, heading down the street as quickly as I
could without looking obvious about it. The movers and shakers who lived in
this part of the city did occasionally have to deal with the distasteful
business of death, but it was always done in the most genteel and civilized
manner, which meant they had genteel and civilized thugs on the payroll to do
it for them. I doubted that any of me theater-bound party tripping lightly
down the steps had ever even seen a dead body before, and they were likely to
make a serious commotion when they finally spotted him. I intended to be well
on my way to elsewhere when that happened.
I'd made it to the end of the block, and had turned the corner, when something
made me pause and look back.
There was a figure standing in front of the body. A slim, nondescript figure,
his shoulders hunched and his head forward, clearly leaning over for a close
look at the dearly departed. With the distance and the restless shadows thrown
by the streetlights, I couldn't make out his face. But his body language
wasn't that of someone horribly shocked or panicked. Apparently, dead bodies
weren't anything new to him.
And as I watched, he straightened up and turned to look in my direction.
With a supreme act of will, I forced my feet not to break into a full-fledged
sprint, but to continue with my original brisk stroll. The man made no move
toward me, but merely watched until I'd moved out of sight around the side of
the corner building.
I walked two more blocks, just to be on the safe side. Then, as the wail of
sirens began to burn through the night, I flagged down an autocab.
"Good evening," the computerized voice said as I climbed in. "Destination,
please?"
I looked at the folder still gripped in my hand. Seven days until me train
listed on the ticket. Slightly less than a seven-day flight from Earth to the
Quadrail station sitting in the outer solar system near Jupiter's orbit. If I
was going to catch that train, I was going to have to leave right now.

Awkward, and very spur-of-the-moment. But in some ways, it could actually work
out to my advantage. I'd been planning on taking the Quadrail out into the
galaxy sometime in the next couple of weeks anyway, buying my ticket with the
brand-new credit tag in my pocket. This way, I could at least begin the trip
on someone else's dollar.
Only I hadn't intended on heading out quite this soon. And I hadn't intended