"Thomas A. Easton - Silicon Karma" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

"That's been a good selling point," said Manora Day. "But I can't use it
now," said Minckton. "I'll have to tell the press something soon, and
I'll have to say we're doing something. If I can't ..." He shrugged
heavily, held one hand out, palm up, and turned it over. "Maybe it's
just one of the hazards of life? In the box or out of it."

Kymon barked the briefest of laughs. "We can't say that. It's what many
of our customers are dying to escape."

"Can we talk to anybody in the box?" asked Day. Spander shook his head.
"Not unless they call us."

"Set it up before they go in?" asked Minckton. ""Your mission, if you
choose to accept it ... '" Day laughed. He winked at her. Kymon said,
"We need one with some loyalty to the Corporation. We don't want her
talking to anyone else."

"Like the Enquirer."

Spander looked thoughtful for a moment. "There's Durgov. He's due to go
in soon." Then he shook his head and sucked his teeth again. "We forced
him to retire after the stroke. He hates our guts."

"Talk to him anyway."

CHAPTER 1.

"There," said the technician as he withdrew the needle from her arm.
Rose Pillock blinked. She could already feel the drug wrapping her
consciousness in layers of cotton wool. She turned her head to one side
and there, in the polished stainless steel of an equipment casing, she
saw herself. Thin, gray hair, almost white, straggling across her scalp.
A face seamed by time and illness, the flesh worn so thin that the bone
of her skull threatened to burst free. An arm, a sleeve pushed up to
expose the crook of her elbow for the technician's coolly professional
hands, the skin wrinkled and spotted, the meat reduced to flaccid


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strings. She rolled her head the other way and wished she were in her
own bed. She lay on a narrow gurney, its thin pad not quite enough to
ease the pressure of her skeleton on the interior of her fleshly
envelope. A sheet covered her swollen abdomen. Above her stretched white
acoustic panels. Below her, she knew, was gleaming tile. To the sides
the walls were obscured by banks of equipment, monitors for her body,
racks of electronics, terabytes of computer memory and processing
capacity. Behind her, its keyhole maw waiting for someone to push the
gurney toward it, was a massive, white-enameled donut that reminded her