"Steve Perry - Matador 6 - The Albino Knife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

Carlos nodded again. He understood what Jarl meant. Whoever had gotten to the computer could have
put a nuke under a chair somewhere instead and blown the ship into radioactive slag. Their defenses had
been breached, and if whoever it was hadn't been intent on making it look like some kind of computer
malfunction, an accident, they could have easily wiped out a lot of important people.

Carlos was used to enemies—the old regime had not left willingly—but this would-be assassin was very
clever.

And clever enemies were dangerous.

Prologue Two

Juete left her station at the casino and strolled through the contiguous corridors toward her quarters. She
didn't have to work, not with Emile's annual stipend still coming after all the years, but she had to be with
people, and she enjoyed doing it in a setting she could control. As an Albino Exotic, she always carried
her pheromones with her, and time had been very gentle with her. Even among her kind, Juete was still
considered more attractive than average, and there were few normal humans or compatible mues who
could look at any albino without feeling desire. Albinos had been bred for beauty, originally as sexual
playthings, and the genes had been hardy ones. Where they were unprotected, the Dark-world albino
population tended to be raped or murdered more frequently than any other ethnic group in the galaxy.
Governments changed but human nature did not. Beauty carried its price, sometimes a fatal one. The
corridor wound through the upper reaches of the casino, away from where Juete greeted the wealthy
patrons who came as special guests of the management. Since the Confed's destruction five years earlier,
things had loosened up considerably, travel restrictions were gone, and those who had been nervous
about star hopping before now came in droves to the pleasure world of Vishnu to spend their standards.

Through the denscris half of the tube, Juete watched the people on the multiple levels of the main casino.
There were dozens of ways to win or lose money operating on the floors, and the house percentage was
high enough so that it never lost.

Vishnu sold pleasure in most of its acceptable forms and once, Juete would have been a more direct
seller. In theory she couldn't work or even live full-time on the world, one of three large moons orbiting
Shiva in the Tau System. Residency and employment privileges on Vishnu were reserved for natives.
People often made exceptions for Exotics, however, and Juete was comfortable with exceptions in her
favor. She didn't work hard, got to meet rich and interesting people, and lived in a safe environment. The
security in the casinos was necessarily strict; access to the corridors through which the staff traveled to
their cubicles was guarded by EEG recognition electronics and full-scan electropophy gear, backed by
zap-field wards. Nobody would wander in by accident and so far, nobody had been able to get inside
intentionally.

Juete's cubicle was just ahead. The tell-tale and recording din built into the door showed three green
diodes and one red—nobody had called, nobody had opened the door or left messages, and the alarm
was armed.
Juete wore skintights, colored jet to contrast with her skin, and her pale hand flashed white against the
black of her sleeve and half-gloves under the portal light as she handprinted the lock.

"Shooo-et-tay?" the din's slow and gravelly chipvoice asked.

"Yes, of course."