"Pat Cadigan - Death in the Promised Land" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cadigan Pat)

"Yeah, sure. Employee discount here's pretty good."
"Do you spend much time in post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty?"

Now the manager shrugged and looked at the ceiling almost coyly. "I guess I been known to. You gotta scan rated zone because when you get a virgin in, you gotta talk about what you know. I say that's the difference between a quality business and a ditch."
Konstantin nodded absently. Once a place got too popular, nobody would admit to going voluntarily, even in AR. "And Body Sativa?"
Pleshette shrugged one shoulder. "Everybody knows about her, but not as many really seen her as say so."
"But you have," Konstantin said.
"Of course. "
Of course. Konstantin managed not to smile. "You think you could introduce me?"
"Of course not." The woman was almost offended.
Now Konstantin shrugged. "It was worth a try."
"You got to understand here that anyone who knows Body and drags along every prole that wants to see her, won't know her for too long."
"I guess I can understand that. Suppose I go in and find her myself?"
Pleshette stared at her. "You think you can?"
"One of your employees offered me some secret insider icons. Whatever those are."
The manager straightened up. "Yeah? Who?" she asked sharply.
"The bored one. Mezzer. Tim."
"Oh, him. " Pleshette waved one hand. "You can find his so-called secret insider icons in the index of any online guidebook. I got stuff you can get around with."
"But will you loan any to me?"
The funny little face looked doubtful. "What're you gonna do with it?"
Konstantin took a breath. "All I want to do is ask this Body Sativa some questions. "
"What kind of questions?" the night manager asked suspiciously.
Now Konstantin felt as if she had fallen through a rabbit hole in time that had sent her back to the beginning of the situation, which she would have to explain all over again. "Questions having to do with the kid who died here tonight-Shantih Love, or Tomoyuki Iguchi, whichever you knew him as. "
"I didn't know him at all," said Pleshette. Konstantin felt like screaming. "And there's no insurance that Body Sativa did, either. But if that's all you really want to do, I can load some stuff for you. But you got to promise me, you won't misuse any of it."
"Misuse it how?" Konstantin asked.
"Poaching. "
"And what would that entail?"
"Getting stuff you're not entitled to get."
"Stuff? "In AR?" Konstantin felt completely lost now.
The night manager folded her arms again. "Yeah. Stuff in AR. In the Sitty. Everybody who goes in regular's got stuff in AR. So I got this nothing job. I got to put up with blowfish like Miles Mank. I live in a hive on Sepulveda. But I got stuff in AR. I got a good place for myself, I'm in the game with the name and the fame. I even got myself a few passwords. I put in plenty of time to get all that. I don't want it just slipped out from under me when I'm not there to defend it." The funny little face started to pucker unhappily. "You got stuff out here, you don't need to go poachin' my stuff in there. If you see what I mean."
Konstantin saw; it sent a wave of melancholy through her. "All I want to do is contact Body Sativa if I can. I don't want to do anything else."
Pleshette held her gaze for a long moment and then shrugged her bony shoulders hugely. "Yeah. Well, you know, it's not like I can't tell the difference between in there and out here, it's not like I think I can put that stuff in a bank or anything. But I put a lot of time in; I spent some big sums doin' it. If I give it away, then I got nothing. You see that?"

Konstantin saw. She couldn't decide, however, if it was the sort of thing a person might kill for.

Guilfoyle Pleshette found a clean hotsuit in Konstantin's size and helped her put it on, giving her a flurry of instructions in her little cartoony voice. Konstantin felt silly, even though she knew this was really just like any other information gathering operation, except it was more like using the telephone. Unless what happened to the kid happened to her, she thought unhappily.
Tim Mezzer made good on his promise to supply icons and loaded the file into the headmount for her. "All you have to do is ask for your icon cat," he said, sounding less bored. "And if you're not sure which icon to try, ask for advice."
"Ask who?"
"The icons," he said, looking at her as if she should have known this. "They all have their own help files attached. But I gotta tell you, they're all pretty idiosyncratic, too. You know how it is, what some people call help. "
Konstantin was mildly alarmed to find that she actually understood what he was telling her. After loading her own information into the headmount, Pleshette took her to one of the deluxe cubicles-deluxe meaning it was half again as large and included an extra chair. She helped Konstantin get comfortable in it, fastened the straps just tightly enough to keep her from falling if she got overly energetic, and fitted her headmount for her. Konstantin tried to thank her, but the headmount muffled her too well. She felt more than heard the woman leave the room. Fear rippled through her, briefly but intensely, making her dizzy.

Then the screen lit up with a control panel graphic and she immediately regained her balance. She turned on the log. The log was an independent, outside operation with only an on-off access, so she'd have her own record that she could prove hadn't been tampered with later, if necessary. Funny how the first thing anyone had to do with taped evidence was prove that it hadn't been toasted, she thought.
The control panel graphic disappeared and the screen showed her the configuration menu. She made her choices-sighting graphic and help line on request-while the 'suit warmed up. This was a full-coverage 'suit, she realized, uncomfortable. Somehow, she hadn't given it any thought when she was putting it on and it was too late to do anything about it now. Besides, they were probably all full-coverage 'suits; full-coverage would be the big attraction in a place like this. As if to confirm her thoughts, a hotsuit ad replaced the configuration menu.

Because if you're not going to feel it all over, murmured a congenial female voice while a hotsuit, transparent to show all the sensors, revolved on the screen, why bother? Which, when you thought about it, wasn't such an unreasonable question.
The head-mounted monitor adjusted the fine-tuning for her focal length by showing her the standard introduction in block letters on a background of shifting colors. Konstantin sighed impatiently. So much introductory material with the meter running-she could see the clock icon tagging along at the upper edge of her peripheral vision on the right side. You probably couldn't go broke operating a video parlor, she thought, unless you tried real, real hard.

The sign came up so suddenly that it took at least three seconds to register on her, and even then she wasn't sure right away whether she was really seeing it, or imagining it. Seeing in AR felt strangely too close to thinking.

WELCOME TO THE LAND OF ANYTHING GOES HERE THERE ARE NO RULES EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED