"Kelly,_James_Patrick_-_Ninety_Percent_of_Everything" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

Wetherall looked shocked. "You haven't seen them yet!"
"I've been busy," Nguyen said. "Other matters required my attention."
"My god, Nguyen," said Wetherall. "The jewels are what this is all about."
"For you." He sighed. "Oh, I've looked at pixes. They're admirable.
"You may not be the sort of person they are designed for," I said.
Wetherall picked up on that instantly. "What do you mean?"
I did not want to spill the beans on my theory so soon. "Nothing. Just that the jewels seem to fascinate some people more than others."
"Like Wetherall and you?" Nguyen said.
"And Thorp," Wetherall added.
I laughed. "Let's leave him out of this."
"Why did you call them shitdogs, Liz?" Nguyen asked. "Aren't you embarrassed to be studying something called a shitdog?"
"The Marines named them. Nobody asked me," I said. It was a sore subject, so I changed it. "What about that name for your house?"
"If that's what you want," said Wetherall. "Queen Jolly Freeze will do nicely."
As dinner went on, Nguyen became increasingly quiet. He hadn't been eating well of late, he told us, because everything tasted like boiled potatoes.
"It's true," said Wetherall, digging a spoon into a melting scoop of Mintastic. "Even my private blend of Jolly Freeze has clearly suffered flavor degradation. But they tell me it's temporary. Don't worry, your taste buds will bloom again, Nguyen. Besides, it's a small price to pay for the jewels -- and all this emptiness."
"As rewarding as this project has been," said Nguyen wearily, "I begin to look forward to its completion."
At that, I felt a vague dismay. Without noticing, I'd gotten used to Nguyen O'Hara's company, his dark, ironic presence.
He stood abruptly, muttered something about running some simulations and was gone before either of us could protest. Wetherall and I looked at each other across the table, then I glanced quickly down at my plate. Being stranded for the evening with the Emperor of Ice Cream was not what I'd had in mind.
* * * *
Wetherall and I descended from the lifthouse and crossed the flat, our shoes crunching the packed salt. The temperature must have dropped thirty degrees -- it was Wetherall weather. Tonight the extra dose of nosegays made the big stink smell like the fruitcake cookies Aunt Lindsay makes for Bastille Day. A kilometer away, Pile A was a dark silhouette against the star-filled sky. The outcropping of jewels glinted at the top. One of the shitdogs circled the base, and in the distance I saw another lumbering toward the mountains.
I still wasn't sure why I'd agreed to leave Laputa for some after-dinner jewel-viewing. Perhaps I didn't want to admit how much Nguyen's abrupt departure had dashed some obscure hopes in me. At least in the dark I didn't have to look at Wetherall looking at me.
I stopped to glance up. There were billions of stars, one for every dollar of Wetherall's hideous fortune. The Milky Way flowed like a silver river across the sky. Off in the distance, the Pile A jewel outcropping gave off minor reflections in a hundred colors. I felt small.
"It's a big universe," said Wetherall. "One time my mother and I -- we were living in Telluride, I must've been ten or eleven. The sky was full of stars, like tonight, and for the first time I realized -- they were here a million years ago and they'll be here a million years from now."
He looked up into the night. I caught his scent as I walked beside him. He smelled like tears.
I felt sorry for him. Damn those nosegays -- what I wanted to feel was irritation. I wanted to tell him, of course you're mortal, bud. What you're talking about is the human condition, not some problem only you have.
I didn't say anything. After a moment he spoke again.
"So where did the shitdogs come from, Liz?"
"Howard at Cambridge speculates they come from a planet orbiting a star of spectral type B. He bases this on their skin color, and that third eyelid they have."
"That's a pretty elaborate structure to build on a foundation of air."
"You should know about building structures on air."
He laughed. His face was a white smear in the darkness, his eyes two shadows. He stood quite close. For some reason my heart was racing. He leaned forward, then suddenly pointed over my shoulder. "Damn media leeches! Quick, follow me."
I turned and saw jeep lights sweeping by.
Before I could say a word Wetherall dashed off toward a pile of rubble a few hundred meters away. I stayed put and watched the jeep pull up to Laputa's stairs. Murk Janglish got out and took the steps two at a time.
I went to tell Wetherall. The debris was tailings piled up at the entrance to a shitdog tunnel. The hole gaped black as a tar pit, six meters across. I couldn't find Wetherall among the heaps of salt and rock. "Oh mogul!" I called. "Here mogul, mogul, mogul. There's a good mogul."
"Shhhhh!" he hissed. His arm appeared from behind one of the nearer piles, waving me toward him. "They'll hear you."
"Don't worry. It's only your lawyer."
"Murk? What's he doing out here at this time of night?"
"Subpoenaing snakes? How should I know?"
"Come here for a second." He was standing at the edge of the tunnel. "How deep do you suppose this thing goes?"
"You've read my reports. We've sent drones down as far as six kilometers, but there's no reason the dogs can't go deeper. For all we know they cruise the mantle."
Wetherall tossed a pebble into the pit. It was a long few seconds before it hit and rattled. "And what are the chances a shitdog is going to pop out of this hole and eat us?"
"The shitdogs don't inhabit these tunnels, and don't revisit them after they've dug them. The average length of a tunnel is six point three kilometers, average depth two point five. The walls are covered with excreta chemically similar to the pile excretions, which forms a mastic to reinforce the tunnel against.... What's so funny?"
I could see his smile in the darkness. "You are so serious about your work."
It was past time to tell him about the change in the shitdogs' behavior. I evaded. "At least I care about something besides money."
"Money? Me? You've got the wrong idea about me, Liz. I'm just the goose that lays the golden eggs. I don't bother with what happens afterward. It's people like Murk who sit on the nest."
"Watch out -- you might trip over that metaphor." I turned and started walking away.
"I didn't mean to make fun of you." He caught up to me. "Nguyen's right about us being alike, you know. When I look at you I see myself with an academic veneer. Those jewels speak to me, Liz, in a way nothing else ever has. The problem is that I don't understand them -- yet. I don't expect that the jewels are going to hand me the secrets of the universe." I tried to get away from him, but he matched my stride. "I'm not even sure that once I do understand them, I'll be able to explain. But I am certain I'll be surprised."
He got in front of me, made me stop. "I like being surprised," he said. "You surprise me."
"Right," I said. "And I didn't even sign the waiver."
He shook his head. "There aren't many people as strong as you are," he said. "Two hundred and thirty-eight billion dollars is like a black hole. It can crush the life out of everything that comes near it."