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

"Wait, I'm not packed -- I don't even have a toothbrush."
"Money," he said, "means never having to pack." He produced a cash card from his shirt pocket and offered it to me. "When you get there, you can buy whatever you need." He flicked his thumb against the card's edge. "Buy three of whatever you need."
"But where are we going?"
He slipped his arm around me and aimed me at the jet. "Las Vegas," he said.
* * * *
As we approached The Zones Resort & Casino, I could see Nguyen O'Hara's Laputa hovering some thirty meters over the parking garage. On the roof deck directly beneath it was the truck which served as its ground station. The sides of this vehicle were enormous pix; they cycled through a montage of people of various ages and races and social classes, all pointing up in wonder at the marvelous floating house. Satisfied customers, apparently.
We'd been met at McCarran Airport by yet another Jolly Freeze van. I was caught off guard when Wetherall ushered me to the cab and then climbed beside me and slid behind the wheel. He had scooted the ungainly van through the traffic on the strip like a teamster late for bowling league. Now he maneuvered it effortlessly up the garage's tightly spiraling ramp. We parked near the truck. I craned my neck; Laputa's shadow grew as it descended slowly toward us. I was so busy goggling that I didn't notice the dapper man until his smiling face appeared at the driver's side window. He knocked and then waved.
"Come in, come in!" Wetherall opened the door and slid across the bench seat toward me. "Liz Cobble, meet Nguyen O'Hara."
He climbed in behind the wheel and shut the door. "My dear Wetherall, you must either turn down the air-conditioning or pass out blankets. Good to have you aboard, Liz." He extended a hand; Wetherall flattened himself against the seat so we could shake. "I'm glad there's finally one sane person on this project."
"Only one?" I said.
"Well, I'm hardly qualified to make representations about my own mental health." He spoke with a slight German accent and tended to murmur.
Nguyen O'Hara had a dark angular face; his neat mustache had flecks of gray in it. There were epicanthal folds at the corners of his dark eyes. While the cut of his suit was conservative, it was the color of butter -- his trademark, apparently. He smiled in an entirely different way from Wetherall. Wetherall's smile was bluff and straightforward. Nguyen's grin was sly and insinuating, as if inviting you in on a joke. I found him instantly attractive.
He immediately launched into the story of a woman down in the casino who, only moments before, had pulled a hammer out of her purse and begun to bludgeon the poker machine she'd been playing. When several bystanders attempted to intervene, security had rushed to her defense. "It turns out she's a destruction artist, hired by the casino to commit random acts of vandalism for the amusement of the guests! These people certainly take their spectacle seriously." He laughed as though he were being tickled.
I glanced up again at Laputa. It loomed now like a wok the size of a post office, suspended beneath a yellow balloon. As it eased to a stop, two multi-jointed arms unfolded from its underside; at the same time a boom with built-in stairs rose up from the truck, hydraulics singing. The arms reached for the boom and locked onto it. A hatch opened and I glimpsed a man dressed in a blue uniform and a butter-colored beret. He disappeared. Through the hatch shuffled a stream of people, forty or fifty strong. It was a middle-aged crowd; most wore sneakers and shorts and pix shirts. What was strange was that they all had one what looked like butter yellow boxing gloves.
"Tourists?" I asked Nguyen.
He nodded. "The operating costs for a floating house of this quality are quite steep. And unlike my friend Wetherall, I'm not financially independent. If you assume forty sightseers at forty dollars a head times four tours then I make about sixty-five hundred dollars a day from opening Laputa to my public."
At the bottom of the stairs a uniformed attendant collected the yellow boxing gloves and ushered tourists onto a waiting bus.
"More than two million dollars a year," said Wetherall approvingly. "And to think they gave you a MacArthur Grant for your architecture."
"You let all those people tramp through your house?" I said.
"What's good enough for the King of England is good enough for me." Nguyen peered through the windshield. "I do apologize for the delay. It'll be safe to go out in another minute or two."
"What are the gloves for?"
"Cuts down on breakage -- and pilferage. By the way, I'm halfway through your infodump on shitdog psychology."
"Actually, I wrote it as a book."
"Is that so? Very readable, nevertheless. You don't think like most academics. I'm intrigued when you say the shitdogs are not at all proprietary about their finished piles."
"They didn't seem to care when we cut the jewels at Eastline A. And they tolerate scientists taking core samples well enough."
"I wonder what they'd do if we wrapped them in plastic. Some sort of smell abatement device, like a giant baggie. No?" He giggled, then opened the door of the van. "Just a thought. Shall we go?"
He had timed his exit so that the tourists would be able to see him from their moving bus. The windows filled almost immediately with faces. Nguyen smiled and gave them a brisk wave. Wetherall ducked back into the van. I couldn't help but see his look of alarm as he cowered behind the dashboard. After the tour bus had disappeared down the ramp, I gave him a gentle nudge. "They're only people, Wetherall. They don't bite."
"Some of them do," he said.
* * * *
We were met at the truck by two attendants. On closer inspection I could see their uniforms weren't actually a solid blue but rather a pattern: Nguyen O'Hara's dense calligraphic signature repeated over and over again.
"Anything to report?" said Nguyen.
"Not really. Somebody dropped chocolate on the carpet in the billiards room. Nothing the cleanbots couldn't take care of."
"Very good. I'll be in conference here the rest of the day, so dismiss the tour staff. We'll open tomorrow at ten. Friday we move to the site."
He led us up the stairs. The risers were pix on which messages flashed sequentially, so that Nguyen's canned greeting cascaded down at us like a waterfall of words:
_Welcome to Laputa_
_Keep in mind_
_You are entering_
_a private residence._
_Food, drink and_
_photography_
_are prohibited._
_Your visit will last_
_about an hour._
_Please note:_
_there are no_
_restrooms_
"What kind of house has no bathrooms?" I said.
Nguyen paused at the open hatch and flicked several switches, turning the message off and lights on inside the lifthouse. "Oh, that's only to discourage the tourists. Water is a kilogram per liter; it's the biggest part of the weight budget. Besides, when we're over a city we can't void waste to the air." He ushered us up the circular stairs.
* * * *
I've never been able to get past my first impression of Laputa: an odd combination of a yacht and my Aunt Galadriel's house. A yacht in that, with the exception of a few moveable pieces, all the furniture and chairs were built in. There were no open shelves; what was not stored in the beautifully joined cupboards was battened down behind transparent sheets of nuglass.