"Ellen Datlow - SciFiction Originals vol.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Datlow Ellen)

nicer than Danny's apartment. "Now can we just get the job done and I'll answer your questions later?"
She pressed for the thirty-fifth floor, the thirty-ninth, the sixty-third, the seventy-seventh, and the ninety-first.
"If I know at least a little of how things work, I'm not as likely to screw up," Danny said.
Vic gave him an affectionate sock on the new arm. "You won't screw up, Dan-man."
As the elevator ascended, Danny decided he could live with Dan-man as a nickname a whole lot more happily than
he had with Danny-boy.
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The passage leading from the elevator bank to the rest of the ninety-first floor had been blocked off with a new entry
portal, a chamber designed to let in only one or two people at a time, accessible within a transparent wall that, the
warning sign said, was electrified.
Vic stopped short. Danny felt his stomach attempt to drop ninety-one floors without him.
"Your piggy-back surveillance cam never picked this up?" he guessed after a long moment.
"This is new," she said slowly. "It wasn't here before. Hell, it wasn't even here this morning."
"Maybe they had a feeling company might drop in?"
Vic muttered something about gently, with a chainsaw. Then she looked at Danny. "Did you happen to bring the
manual for that thing?" she asked.
Danny shrugged his shoulder and showed her the words beginning to scroll on his forearm. Vic seized his arm and
put it under the slightly brighter light above the elevator bank.
"Does this thing have hyperlinks or go-tos, or do you have to read all the way through it every time?" she asked
him.
He snapped his fingers and produced the table of contents.
"Touch your subject of interest. Just like your screen."
"Show-off." She poked his arm.
"Ow. I said touch, not impale."
"What should I look for, information on disarming booby traps or electrified fences or what?"
"I don't know, this is my first combat situation."
"Sarcasm isn't what we need here."
 "I'm serious, I don't know what to look for. Espionage? Is there a section on that?"
Vic surprised him by grabbing his head and kissing him. "I take it back what I said about you being a quick study."
She tapped his arm once, and then again, and then was silent for a long time as she studied the words on his arm,
occasionally scrolling back and re-reading.
Danny sighed. "What time is it?"
"Only ten-fifteen. Not too late, but thanks for the reminder." She looked into his face with concern. "What have
you tried to do with this thing? Other than normal movements and actions, I mean."
"I beat you at arm wrestling. Besides that-well, I kinda overdid the secret handshake with Rakishi. Then Jeremy
tried to get me to unleash a death ray or something on his paper shredder, but nothing happened."
"Because he hadn't read the instructions," Vic said. "And they always accuse women of that one. Now, what we
have to-"
Danny snatched his arm away from her and put it behind his back. "Are you telling me I really do have a death ray
in my arm?"
"No, no, not a death ray. Don't panic." Vic tried to reach around him and grab his arm but he stepped away from
her. "I swear, it's not going to kill anyone."
"Tell me what it is going to do," he demanded, keeping his arm behind himself.
"Well, that's kinda hard without being able to look at the instructions-"
"Try."
Vic took a breath. "You have a... well, it's like a quantum state generator. You can induce certain states in things."
"What kind?"
"You can make things insubstantial."
Danny looked at her incredulously. "How?"