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

"I've made reservations for eight-thirty. Is that all right?"
"I'll have to check my calendar. How dressed are we getting?"
"As you see." It was wearing a high-collared white shirt and a blue suit. It hit me that Wetherall wasn't bad looking, in a boyish way. "Can you be ready in twenty minutes?" It didn't wait for an answer.
The hairdresser was looking at me in awe. "That was Ramsdel Wetherall."
"Actually," I said, offering her Wetherall's cash card, "it was an array of electrons with an attitude."
She stared at the card and then back up at me.
"If you're thinking glamorous, you've got it all wrong," I said. "He's -- strange."
"I've heard that," she said. Standing behind me, she lifted the hair from the back of my head and sighed; her eyes met mine in the mirror. "You know, there's no reason for you to use your own hair. I can give you a smartwig."
I eyed the brown pageboy bob I had worn since grad school. "Thanks, but no thanks."
"Still -- "
I shooed her away with a hundred dollar tip. There was nothing wrong with my hair and even if there was, I didn't need to know about it. I undressed, swept through the scanner in the closet door and activated the virtual Ragusa in the clothes processor.
A few minutes later I emerged in a long-sleeved black velvet gown that grazed my ankles. It had light boning and back smocking. The sweetheart neckline was just off the shoulders. I'm told I have good shoulders.
There was a knock at the door.
I paused in front of the mirror. So I might've looked better if I'd had an Arpels necklace dangling to my decolletage, but for short notice this would do. I was a professor, not a runway model. And the dinner was actually an appointment with a chill-crazed eccentric with a fear of heights, people, and who knew what else?
But to the world it would be a date with Ramsdel Wetherall. I wondered about the women he normally dated. Did any of them wear their own hair?
* * * *
When I opened the door I was greeted not by Wetherall, but by a severe, angular man in a charcoal suit that looked like it cost more than my car. He tried to smile but didn't seem to have had much practice at it. "Good evening, Dr. Cobble. I'm Murk Janglish, Mr. Wetherall's lawyer. Perhaps he's mentioned me to you?" He slipped through the door like a watermelon seed. "I hope you don't mind my doing a security check before we go down." He took out a wand and, craning up and down on his knees like a human ironing board, ran it over the length of my body. Then he inspected my irises and hands.
"Do you want to check my teeth?"
"Your teeth are fine. Nice dress." He cocked his head to one side. "I don't know about the hair, though."
I let that go. "I take it Wetherall sent you to pick me up?"
"Actually, he overlooked it. Details are not his strength -- that's why I'm needed."
"I thought the point of all those avatars was to free him from the details."
"His avatars are too good, I'm afraid. They replicate the man himself and all his foibles. They generate almost as much trouble for me as he does. Look, I'd appreciate it if you didn't distract Mr. Wetherall. He's a little scattered at the moment."
"Distract him? In what way?"
He stared at me as if I'd just fallen off the barn. "That's all right. On second thought, I don't think there will be any problems. May I escort you down?"
His gesture at the door might have appeared polite if he hadn't also been hustling me out by the elbow with his other hand.
* * * *
Murk Janglish showed me to the Rain Forest Restaurant in the Tropical Zone of the hotel. He led me to one of the rafts moored on the river that looped through the vastness of the restaurant. The raft had a circular palm-thatched roof from which hung a heavy curtain of mosquito netting -- not that there were any mosquitos. Inside the netting was a table set for two. In gold.
"He'll be here," Janglish said. "Sign everything he gives you." And he left.
While I listened to the calls of exotic birds and admired the hordes of butterflies flitting among the branches of the big trees, I ignored the grinding of my stomach and awaited Wetherall. After a few minutes, a tall, awkward-looking man in a safari jacket and khaki hat with a snakeskin hatband detached himself from the bar and sidled past the suddenly oblivious maitre d' toward the raft. He parted the netting, and took the chair opposite me. Immediately the raft nudged away from the dock and we were adrift.
"Excuse me..."
The man took off the bushman's hat and brushed his luxuriant brown hair away from his face. It was Wetherall.
"What happened to your blue suit?" I asked.
"Privacy is always worth the effort." He stuck his leg out from beneath the tablecloth, pulled up on the knee of his pants. "Leg extenders," he said, grinning loonily. He touched his face. "Skin polarizer." He grabbed a strand of his hair and shook it. "Smartwig."
The hair twisted out of his hand and tucked itself back behind his ear. Wetherall slung a backpack from off his shoulder and pulled out a folder. "I have a few things for you to sign."
His _savoir-faire_ took my breath away. "Right," I said. "The liability waiver."
Wetherall looked momentarily fuddled. "Damn, I forgot. Janglish will have my head. No, this is about your avatar. Is it hot in here?"
I waited to open the folder because I could see the sommelier paddling towards our table. Actually, she was being paddled by a busboy. She stood in a dugout canoe, cradling a bottle of wine. Other diners looked down at us from tables perched on platforms in the trees that lined the river. The sommelier ducked through the netting to present the wine to Wetherall.
"Tokay is sweet, almost like syrup." Wetherall sniffed the taste the sommelier had poured for him and waved his approval. "It's the only wine I can drink with dinner. You know, it _is_ hot in here."
"Shall I open the netting?" said the sommelier.
"No, no," said Wetherall. "It's just me. I'll be fine."
The sommelier filled our glasses and headed for shore. I opened the folder and scanned the form on top. "An avatar is more trouble than I want to get into."
"It only takes a few hours. They take a psychological inventory, run some perceptual tests. Oh, and you'll have to allow them access to some of your personal databases." His expression was innocent. "Don't worry, it's all very secure." I could see how some women might find those deep, guileless eyes -- not to mention two hundred and thirty-eight billion dollars -- sexy.
"But what do I need one for?"
"To teach your classes. To handle the press. To order materials, manage your research team, search databases. To remember why you thought what you're doing now was such a good idea. Believe me, in a few weeks it'll be hard to imagine how you got along without one."
"What do you mean, teach my classes?"
"I had to promise your Saintjohn Matthewson and the dean that there would be no academic disruption."
"What gave you the right to interfere?"
"I told you everything would be taken care of."
I glared at him.