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

with an apologetic look on her wrinkled face. Dear boy, I am sorry about this, but they say I've got to do it, they want
that arm.
Then the door opened and he found himself blinking up at Vic. There was a uniform standing behind her.
"So, would you like to go home?"
He swallowed. "I've got to go to the bathroom."
"Hold it till my place," she said, smiling artificially as she leaned down to help him up. "Don't ask for any favors,
don't even ask for so much as someone's pardon if you burp. And don't burp, either." She marched him along beside
her, not hurrying but still moving fast in spite of his stiff clumsiness. He didn't actually wake up until she pushed him
into the back of a yellow cab in a parking garage. She got in next to him and slammed the door. The cab started off, the
driver apparently already knowing the destination.
Danny started to say something and she put her hand over his mouth and her own. By the time they got back to
Trader Vic's in the thin morning light, he thought he was going to burst, in several different ways.
j

"The arm, I take it, is done. Except as an arm." She put a mug of coffee in front of him on the coffee table. He sat on the
edge of the couch, wanting more than anything just to stretch out and fall into a coma for several hours.
Danny shrugged. "Could be worse. I thought it was. First I thought they, or it, or whatever that was, I thought they
were taking me with them. Then I thought they took the arm. But I guess they just needed the quantum generator.
Considerate of them." He paused with the mug halfway to his mouth. "No, actually, it was probably just a matter of
being practical. What they didn't need, they left behind."
Vic raised her eyebrows over her own cup of coffee.
"Maybe they were being considerate."
"Maybe. But I promised myself not to take everything so personally." He sipped the coffee. It was incredibly good.
"Okay. Now, tell me, before I strain myself with curiosity."
"I got us out of it the way I get anything. I'm Trader Vic. I traded."
"What?" he asked.
"Jeremy's code."
"But it expired."
"That doesn't mean you can't take it apart and see how it did work. That's what we were doing most of the night. Or
rather, a couple of their R&D team were dissecting it and reconstructing it while I sat by and offered suggestions.
When they were satisfied that they really had a good piece of merchandise, they took me to see the head guy, who
could be Dr. Sibelius's twin, only about thirty years older."
"And?" Danny said.
"And we made a deal. I told her you and I were just a couple of thrill-seeking, joyriding perpetual adolescents who
dared each other to get all the way to the Ciel roof undetected, with this bit of pirated software from, oh, hell, I don't
know where. And we didn't see anything else. We were on the ninety-first floor when we realized we might not make it,
so we got out of the elevator and ran up the rest of the way. That's all we know."
"She bought that?" Danny looked pained. "If she really believes that, she's the dumbest head person in any
corporation any time anywhere."
"Actually, it's what she wants most of Ciel to believe that counts. It's very important to her and a few of the other
top people that the ninety-first floor room remain... unremarkable."
"But that charged barrier-security-"
"Charged barriers are apparently pretty unremarkable in the Ciel building, at least on the upper floors where very
few get to go," said Vic. "They don't tell security what they're guarding-they just tell them to guard it. Anyone who
wanted to remain an employee at Ciel didn't ask questions they didn't already know the answers to. She wasn't any too
happy about the, ah, loss of the residents of the room on the ninety-first floor, but she was a lot less unhappy than
she would have been had everyone else seen them. Or if we'd started talking. Not that anyone would have believed us.
Nor would we have lived long enough to gain any credibility."
"What about your buyer?"
"My buyer made a small good-faith payment to demonstrate understanding that the fact no names were mentioned