"Peter W. Prellwitz - Book 01 - Shards" - читать интересную книгу автора (Prellwitz Peter W)

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Larry Alexander, the security guard, sat at his desk, his gun aimed at me in a very offhanded way.
Procedure dictated that only one person was allowed in at a time, and standing orders were to shoot
anyone who hadn't used voice verification. Incredibly, it had happened once. A couple of workers, who
for some unknown reason had disregarded the constant warnings, lectures and protocol meetings,
decided to see whether Larry really would shoot the unverified one, even though he knew both. They
didn't think he would. We almost never hired idiots, wisdom being prized even higher than intelligence,
but occasionally one got through.

They were right, though; Larry didn't shoot. It turned out that Larry's just a target for hostile intruders.
The actual guard was located in one of three hidden vantage points. He was the one who shot, killing the
second idiot. Now everybody entered one at a time.

I approached Larry and waved. “Morning, Larry! How's NATech's number one sitting duck?"

For someone who was paid essentially to greet people and stop bullets, Larry seemed very firmly
grounded. He laughed, his ruddy, slightly wrinkled face breaking into a big grin. “Fine, John! Nancy 's
back from Florida , and we're hoping to get up to the cabin next week."

"I envy you. My last vacation was about ... oh ... around ... I'm sorry. What's a vacation again?"

He grinned again and let me pass. There was no need to check in or out at the security desk once access
had been gained at NATech's government research facility; every second was recorded on three separate
holomeras, and if I wasn't who I said I was, I'd be on the floor, flopping, jerking, twitching or some such
useless action, depending on where the sniper chose to shoot me.

First stop was my office. It would be nice to say it had a huge picture window that overlooked a stunning
view, but my office didn't have a view. It didn't even have a window. NATech was buried inside a
mountain in the western United States-never mind where-and was built to withstand several hundred
megatons of blasts. What we did was pretty important, not just for military reasons, but for civilian and
peacetime reasons as well, which is why we were still here and other companies, who had smugly
thought of themselves as our competitors, were not. We did not have a single product, weapon, program,
or piece of equipment on the market. What we did have was ideas. Not cutting edge stuff; everyone
worth their salt had cutting edge ideas. We dealt only with unrealistic ideas. Unrealistic today, but not so
within twenty years. That was our main focus: to envision technology and society and the impact of one
on the other in twenty years. We then developed that technology and prepared the government, the
public, and industry for the future. Nearly eighty years' existence gave proof to the need of our unique
type of service.

Janet was waiting for me with my morning coffee. She always had my morning coffee ready. It really
bugged me, too. Yes, she was my administrative assistant. But I had selected the brilliant Miss Yashida
for her insight and brains, not to run errands and fetch my coffee. She held it out for me, and with a sigh,

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