"Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

'He doesn't know about you... about us.'
Calvin shook his head, then -- shockingly -- Janequin appeared in the room. Sylveste fought to
maintain his composure, but it was obvious what had just happened. Calvin must have found a way
to send commands to the escritoire's private-level functions.
Calvin was and always had been a devious bastard, Sylveste thought. Ultimately that was why he
remained of use.
Janequin's full-body projection was slightly less sharp than Calvin's, for Janequin's image was
coming over the satellite network -- patchy at best -- from Mantell. And the cameras imaging him
had probably seen better days, Sylveste thought -- like much else on Resurgam.
'There you are,' Janequin said, noticing only Sylveste at first. 'I've been trying to reach you for the
last hour. Don't you have a way of being alerted to incoming calls when you're down in the pit?'
'I do,' Sylveste said. 'But I turned it off. It was too distracting.'
'Oh,' Janequin said, with only the tiniest hint of annoyance. 'Very shrewd indeed. Especially for a
man in your position. You realise what I'm talking about, of course. There's trouble afoot, Dan,
perhaps more than you...' Then Janequin must have noticed Cal for the first time. He studied the
figure in the chair for a moment before speaking. 'My word. It is you, isn't it?'
Cal nodded without saying a word.
'This is his beta-level simulation,' Sylveste said. It was important to clear that up before the
conversation proceeded any further; alphas and betas were fundamentally different things and
Stoner etiquette was very punctilious indeed about distinguishing between the two. Sylveste would
have been guilty of an extreme social gaffe had he allowed Janequin to think that this was the long-
lost alpha-level recording.
'I was consulting with him... with it,' Sylveste said.
Calvin pulled a face.
'About what?' Janequin said. He was an old man -- the oldest person on Resurgam, in fact – and
with each passing year his appearance seemed to approach fractionally closer to some simian ideal.
His white hair, moustache and beard framed a small pink face in the manner of some rare
marmoset. On Yellowstone, there had been no more talented expert in genetics outside of the
Mixmasters, and there were some who rated Janequin a good deal cleverer than any in that sect, for
all that his genius was of the undemonstrative sort, accumulating not in any flash of brilliance, but
through years and years of quietly excellent work. He was well into his fourth century now, and
layer upon layer of longevity treatment was beginning to crumble visibly. Sylveste supposed that
before very long Janequin would be the first person on Resurgam to die of old age. The thought
filled him with sadness. Though there was much upon which Janequin and he disagreed, they had
always seen eye to eye on all the important things.
'He's found something,' Cal said.
Janequin's eyes brightened, years lifting off him in the joy of scientific discovery. 'Really?'
'Yes, I...' Then something else odd happened. The room was gone now. The three of them were
standing on a balcony, high above what Sylveste instantly recognised as Chasm City. Calvin's doing
again. The escritoire had followed them like an obedient dog. If Cal could access its private-level
functions, Sylveste thought, he could also do this kind of trick, running one of the escritoire's
standard environments. It was a good simulation, too: down to the slap of wind against Sylveste's
cheek and the city's almost intangible smell, never easy to define but always obvious by its absence
in more cheaply done environments.
It was the city from his childhood: the high Belle Epoque. Awesome gold structures marched into
the distance like sculpted clouds, buzzing with aerial traffic. Below, tiered parks and gardens
stepped down in a series of dizzying vistas towards a verdant haze of greenery and light, kilometres
beneath their feet.
'Isn't it great to see the old place?' Cal said. 'And to think that it was almost ours for the taking; so
much within reach of our clan... who knows how we might have changed things, if we'd held the