"Matthew Hughes - The Meaning of Luff" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Matt)

his illicit trade, many of them designed by Imbry himself.
Outside, he summoned a public aircar and had it drop him beside an alley two streets from Ombron
Square. There he slipped into the elision suit, positioned his weapons for easy deployment, and set off to
find Welliver Tung. His unseen passage along the debris-strewn streets excited no comment from the few
pedestrians he slipped past.

The house that Tung had bought dated from the umpteenth revival of an ornate style of architecture that
Imbry considered both finicky and overdone. Its defenses were also standard and he rapidly tickled his
way through them, entering the rear of the place on the ground floor. The cleaning systems had cycled
down to minimal, and dust hung in the air, along with a faintly sweet mustiness that Imbry recognized as
the scent of death, attenuated by the passing of several years.

The odor corroborated what Imbry had gathered from his researches: the former owner of the property,
Tib denAarrafol, had been a recluse with few associates and no family. He had not been seen in public
for more than a decade, and had most likely died a solitary death here at home, his corpse drying and
moldering inconspicuously while the house puttered on about him. At some point, tollsters from the
Archonate's fiduciary division had affixed a notice to the door stipulating that unless unpaid taxes were
made good, the place would be auctioned. Tib denAarrafol being unable to meet his obligations, the
property had gone to the sole bidder: Welliver Tung.

Imbry listened and deduced that the new owner was engaged in moving furniture in one of the front
rooms. With his shocker in one hand and the needler in the other, he made his way toward the scraping
and bumping. At the end of a dimly lit hall he peered through a doorway and spied his debtor shoving
chairs and side tables across the uncarpeted floor, leaving a blank space before a sideboard that stood
against the far wall. On its recently dusted surface rested what looked to be a dull black stone the size of
Imbry's head, set in an armature of tarnished silver.

The fat man turned his gaze to each corner of the room, determining that Welliver Tung was alone. Then
he stepped into the doorway, aimed both weapons and said, "You owe me."

Tung neither squeaked nor jumped. Imbry admired the professionalism that caused her to freeze, then
turn oh so slowly toward the door, showing her hands empty and well clear of her body. He knew that all
she was seeing was a slight shimmer behind a needler and shocker suspended in the air and directed her
way. But his voice would have been unmistakable.

"I knew you would show up eventually," she said. "I was hoping to have enough time to ready this for
you."

"In situations like this I have found it useful to appear unexpectedly," he said.

"I fully intended to pay you."

"Of course you did. Now explain to me, and be brief, why you haven't, and while you do so I will weigh
the penalty."

She had prepared her story. She had been looking for out-of-the-way premises in which to store various
items over the short to medium terms and had canvassed abandoned properties in this district. The
denAarrafol house had seemed promising, so she had entered and inspected it, finding the former owner
upstairs in bed, where he had quietly expired some years previously.