"David Marusek - Getting to Know You" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marusek David)

“S40?”

“Subterranean 40. Thirty-five floors beneath depot level.”

“You don’t say.”

Zoranna allowed herself to be swept by the waves of commuters
towards the banks of elevators. She had inad-vertently arrived during crash
hour and found herself pressing shoulders with tired and hungry wage
earners at the end of their work cycle. They were uniformly young people,
clones mostly, who wore brown and teal Applied People livery. Neither
brown nor teal was Zoranna’s fa-vorite color.
 The entire row of elevators reserved for the subfloors was
inexplicably off-line. The marquee directed her to elevators in Stanchion 5,
one klick east by pedway, but Zoranna was tired. “Bug,” she said, pointing
to the next row, “do those go down?”

“Affirmative.”

“Good,” she said and jostled her way into the nearest one. It was so
crowded with passengers that the doors— begging their indulgence and
requesting they consolidate— required three tries to latch. By the time the
cornice dis-play showed the results of the destination adjudication, and
Zoranna realized she was aboard a consensus eleva-tor, it was too late to
get off. Floor 63 would be the first stop, followed by 55, 203, 148, etc. Her
floor was dead last.

Bug, she tongued, this is a Dixon lift!

Zoranna’s long day grew measurably longer each time the elevator
stopped to let off or pick up passengers. At each stop the consensus
changed, and destinations were reshuffled, but her stop remained
stubbornly last. Of the five kinds of elevators the tower deployed, the Dixon
con-sensus lifts worked best for groups of people going to popular floors,
but she was the only passenger traveling to the subfloors. Moreover, the
consensual ascent acceleration, a sprightly 2.8-g, upset her stomach. Bug,
she tongued, go home for me and unlock my archives. Retrieve a file
entitled “cerebral aneurysm” and forward it to the elevator’s adjudicator.
We’ll just manufacture our own consensus.

This file is out of date, Bug said in her ear after a mo-ment, its
implant voice like the whine of a mosquito. Bug cannot feed obsolete data
to a public conveyance.

Then postdate it.

That is not allowed.

“I’ll tell you what’s not allowed!” she said, and people looked at her.