"Barry B. Longyear - The Hangingstone Rat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

“Very well, Shad, ring up Okehampton Station and find out where their
missing constable is. Meanwhile, put us down near the prang.”

While he did that I turned in my seat and ran up the mechs: vehicles
of various sizes and configurations, big walking to micro flying, into which
we could copy to get into difficult places allowing us to collect and analyze
evidence. Shad put down the cruiser on the northwest slope of the hill
about five meters above the aforementioned logan stone. The sunlight
reflected from the polished metal Vader prang, cop slang for the pencil-thin
scene analyzer mounted on the southwest edge of the rock plate. It would
be facing the corpse. I looked in that direction but could see nothing among
the heather. It was, at least, not a terribly large rat.

“Jaggs, guy on the phone says Okehampton cops can’t find any
Hangingstone Hill report. He says they didn’t call in a dead bio to ABCD this
morning.”

“Rubbish.”

“The call would have been automatically logged and recorded,
according to their man PC Sudbury, and he can find no such record in the
computer. Case closed.”

“Tell him to pull his ruddy thumb out and try again.”
 The doors rotated up, and I held up a hand to Shad. “Before that, let’s
see if we even have a body. This is beginning to look suspiciously like a
hoax.”

“Local yokels having a little fun with ABCD?” suggested the duck.

“Perhaps the constabulary having a laugh.” I climbed out of the
cruiser, stood, and took a few steps down toward the stone. Southwest of
it, perhaps two meters distant, I could see in the heather what looked like
the body of a rat with a body comparable in size to that of a gray squirrel. It
was lying on its left side. Shad flew up next to me. “Okay,” he said as he
landed, “at least we have a corpse.”

“Yes. A bio. I can still read the receiver signal. Perhaps we can
harvest the engrams before it zeroes out.”

“I wonder why someone would copy into a rat bio?” said Shad. “Why
would they want to? And what’s a rat with a human engram imprint doing out
here in the boonies—and with no cheese?”

“Perhaps he ate all his cheese and expired from despondency,” I
suggested facetiously. “I’ll sort the calls, Shad. After you make a try on the
engrams, get a scan, temp, DNA, and ID.”

“You got it.”