"Ken Rand - Bad News from Orbit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rand Ken)

wouldn't tolerate anything or anybody harassing his customers.

“You pleasuring, newsie, or you working?” He stood before the portal, folded arms, and spread feet, a
massive immovable rock, body language reinforcing a malevolent frown under a thick, black brow.

“I'm entering, Mr. Clyme.” My voice did not quiver. I'd been with TSIN for a few years. I started out in
FashionWatch and moved up from there. I knew the ways. He hesitated, until I moved to key on my
recorder implant at my left temple. He snorted something unpleasant and tapped the portal field to
neutral. I stepped in. He closed the field behind me.

It's impossible to describe the Wafaerer's. You can scan holo images all you want, but you won't get it.
Its reputation as a wastechute is deserved and seriously understated.

As you pass the entry field, your ears are assaulted by the cacophonous howl of at least three audboxes
playing different poptunes at full volume and all at once, the clatter and whack of billiard games and the
hum of several conversations, punctuated with frequent laughter, male and female. The occasional scream
fails to stand out enough to merit attention.

Still, I heard circulation vents whining in protest as they struggled to clean the stench from unhygiened
bodies, from spilled alcoholic beverages, from joestick and stimweed smoke, and years of accumulated
flotsam and slime. I couldn't see the vents. They hid in the gloom cloaking the place like a muggy fog
between dirty, infrequent and inadequate ceiling light panels. Some Wafaerer's denizens no doubt
appreciated the darkness. Like rats or cockroaches, many had good reason to shun the light.

And what denizens. Few in the five meters visible before me looked up when I entered. Two were
prostitutes. They eyed me as I tried to peer through the dark, to locate Horiuchi. One massed at least
two hundred kilos of perfumed flesh, the other looked like she was on a stimweed high as she vibrated
with energy. She was pretty. She wore a mean-looking gatsticker on her hip, naked steel snug against
naked thigh.

They slouched against the bar fondling a tall skinny man. The man turned to glare at me. He was the
ugliest man I've ever seen. Noseless. A black pit existed where his right eye had once been, and the right
side of his face was a shiny purple welt that pulled his lip up in a forced grin exposing long yellow teeth.
He glared at me and something in his throat gurgled.

I may have wet my pants right then if Horiuchi hadn't intervened. My hero.

“You the newsie Slinky sent?” It took me a second to realize it was Horiuchi silhouetted between me
and the hellish trio at the bar.

“Yeah. I'm Peter—"

“Shut up.” He grabbed my arm and pulled. I followed. I had no choice because his hand encircled my
arm like a crash belt from elbow to shoulder and when he pulled, I felt like I was being sucked out an
airlock.
 I followed him as he plowed deeper into the room, a bull ‘loper charging through tall grass, pushing
around tables and chairs, huddled groups of quiet, savage-looking men, and one fist-fight. I glimpsed a
pool of blood glittering blackly on the floor near an overturned table. We stepped through the images
cast from an ill-tuned holotank in the middle of the room, flickering flesh tones from a cheap pornovid,
three shapes gyrating, groaning in mid-air in feigned ecstasy. Drooling, slack-faced men grumbled as our