"Feintuch,.David.-.Seafort.05.-.Voices.Of.Hope.Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feintuch David)

the media gawking at me just so Franjee can pretend I endorse his ..." The doors
closed.

I slouched in Dad's console chair. When I heard the scrape of a chair in the
study I switched on Dad's puter.

I'd broken about half his passwords, but a few were still beyond me. My e-friend
Rolf built a zarky password-cracker,
but wouldn't give me the code. He lived in Alberta, so I couldn't pound on his
door and talk him out of it. On the other hand, I hadn't told him the idea I was
working on, after reading about the latest Arfie.

Idly, as if paying no attention, I tapped at Dad's keyboard, one eye on the
screen.

The Old Man had made my challenge more interesting: he wouldn't allow an
intelligent puter in his home, not even personality overlays or voicerec. "For
years they harassed me. No more." There was no use arguing: he was stubborn
enough to drive anyone to a rebalancing ward, as he'd done to his second wife.
Naturally he never spoke of it; hormone treatment was certainly nothing to brag
about.

I stuck out my tongue at Dad's silent screen. After the net-locks on a superbox,
his passwords should be a zark. If only I could hammer his ice with a CLIP.
Central linked processors sliced through the hardest glacier, if you knew how to
couple them and had the nerve.

Luckily, in our cottage, at least I had access to my nets. Each night, I would
don my mask and gloves and schuss the white powder hills of access.

Tonight, after Dad went to bed, I'd link with a few e-friends and slalom the
gates. He'd never know, and by tomorrow, I'd talk him out of his punishment.

It always worked.

I opened some of his directories I'd already crashed. A letter to Senator
Boland, Uncle Robbie's father. Why did the Old Man bother with that old stuffed
shirt? All Boland did was make speeches. He wanted to rebuild the Navy, bulldoze
the crumbling cities to make a clean beginning, that sort of goof juice.

Yet everyone knew we had no money for the cities; defense came first. Only a few
years before I was bora, an alien armada had rained terror from the skies. We
lost cities, and suffered untold casualties. At last, now, the menace seemed
abated, but thanks to the attacks, and the Old Man's stupidity in letting two of
our colonies go free, my generation would be dead and gone before good times
came again,

"Hi."

I whirled, but it was only Philip. "Prong yourself, P.T." I