"Chalker, Jack L - G.o.d. Inc. 2 - The Shadow Dancers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

with. It's too scary."
"Can you kill it?" Sam asked. "Without killing the addict, I mean?"
"Sure. You can kill anything. If we had enough cases, we could easily isolate
whatever starts breaking it down. Without tipping off the opposition and letting
them know we're on to them, we just don't know for sure if we could cure it or
not and if so what the price would be. We got hold of some raw samples, strictly
by accident, and ran them through every test and every expert and computer the
home world has. We have been unable to make it grow in the lab, and it ignores
test animals, even chimps. The only way it'll reproduce is inside a human, and
since the reproductive clusters humans produce lack something it needs and can't
get, they aren't any good, either."
With that kind of setup, Bill Markham then let us have the whole load.
I got to admit I don't understand the Labyrinth, and I ain't sure nobody really
does. I sure can't figure out how them early scientists guessed it was there,
let alone built this network, this inter-world railroad. I been in it a few
times, but I still can't figure what's happenin' in there. It's like a real long
tunnel, stretchin' out in all directions, only you're inside a cube with
windows. Windows up top, windows beneath, and on all sides 'cept the ones that
keep you in the Labyrinth. That means you always got a choice of four worlds to
exit to. Every once in a while, there's a switch junction, with a control room
and Labyrinth in all directions. That switcher punches his buttons and you go
which way he decides, into a whole set of new cubes in all directions until you
get to other switch points.
Sam and me we went to a bunch of 'em, and we always walked, but there's enough
room in there to drive a truck through-if you could figure out how to make a
truck go up or down instead of just forward, back, left, and right. Of course,
it probably ain't left or up in there; none of the usual rules mean much inside
there, 'cause you're outside everyplace else. They must have some kinda trucks
or flyin' saucers or whatever they use, though, 'cause they move trainloads of
shit through that thing.
Three guilds, which I guess are sorta like unions or somethin', run the thing.
One controls the switch points, one runs the stations, and a third moves the
cargo through from one point to another. Ain't no way the biggest, baddest
computer in creation could look at all that stuff all the time, though, so
security mostly monitors the switches 'cause just about everybody and everything
has to pass at least one of 'em.
The first way they check is that everybody who has any real business in there's
got some kind of code thing in your bones. Fact is, there might be a whole hell
of a lot of Brandys, even with the same fingerprints and eyes and all that, but
they ain't the same person no matter how alike they are. I got a code planted
somewhere inside my bones- don't ask me how or where. They stuck me in a thing
like an iron lung, punched a bunch of buttons, I didn't feel nothin', and that
was it. But now any switchman can look at his or her board as soon as I'm inside
that cube and read out not only who I am but which I am. The code's big, random,
and total nonsense. It's all in computers, of course, but they tell me that even
if you got into the computer you couldn't find the numbers.
If you don't have no number, and you look suspicious, they shoot you off to some
siding, someplace on a world where people just never came about, and you sit
there till they're ready for you, if they ever are. We had that happen. If you
don't have no coding but you sound like you know what you're doin', you can