"Mary Rosenblum - Search Engine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

overdose deaths during the past five years. A glowing question mark tagged the data, crimson, which
meant a continuation would take him into secure and unauthorized data. Pursue it? He almost said no.
"All right, Jimi." He touched the blood-colored question mark. "Continue." It vanished. Searching secure
government data files was going to cost. He hoped he could come up with a reason for Raul, if he caught
it.

His legs wanted to cramp when Aman finally blinked out of his bioware and got stiffly to his feet. The AI
hadn't yet finished its search of the DEA data files. The meal tray on the counter was cold and it was well
past midnight. He stuck the tray in the tiny fridge and threw himself down on the low couch. Like Jimi,
but not drunk on margaritas.

In the morning, he messaged Raul that he wasn't feeling well and asked if he should come in. As
expected, Raul told him no way, go get a screen before you come back. You could count on Raul with
his paranoia about bioterrorism.
It wasn't entirely a lie. He wasn't feeling well. Well covered a lot of turf. The AI had nothing for him on
the overdose cluster it had flagged and that bothered him. There wasn't a lot of security that could stop it.
He emailed Jimi, telling him to work on the Sauza search on his own and attaching a couple of
non-secure files that would give him something he could handle in what would surely be a fuzzy and
hungover state of mind. He found the clothes he needed at the back of his closet, an old, worn tunic-shirt
and a grease-stained pair of jeans. He put on a pair of scuffed and worn out boots he'd found in a city
recycle center years ago, then caught a ped-cab to the light rail and took the northeast run. He paid cash
to the wary driver and used it to buy a one-way entry to the light rail. Not that cash hid his movements.
He smiled grimly as he found a seat. His ped-cab and light rail use had been recorded by citizen.net, the
data company favored by most transportation systems. It would just take someone a few minutes longer
to find out where he had gone today.
City ran out abruptly in the Belt, a no-mans-land of abandoned warehouses and the sagging shells of
houses inhabited by squatters, the chipless bilge of society. Small patches of cultivation suggested an
order to the squalid chaos. As the train rocketed above the sagging roofs and scrubby brush that had
taken over, he caught a brief snapshot glimpse of a round-faced girl peering up at him from beneath a
towering fountain of rose canes thick with bright pink blossoms. Her shift, surprisingly clean and bright,
matched the color of the roses perfectly and she waved suddenly and wildly as the train whisked Aman
past. He craned his neck to see her, but the curve of the track hid her instantly.

At his stop, he stepped out with a scant handful of passengers, women mostly and a couple of men,
returning from a night of cleaning or doing custom handwork for the upscale clothiers. None of them
looked at him as they plodded across the bare and dirty concrete of the platform, but a sense of
observation prickled the back of his neck.

Why would anyone be following him? But Aman loitered to examine the melon slices and early apples
hawked by a couple of bored boys at the end of the platform. He haggled a bit, then spun around and
walked quickly away—which earned him some inventive epithets from the taller of the boys. No sign of a
shadow. Aman shrugged and decided on nerves. His AFs lack of follow-up data bothered him more with
every passing minute. The rising sun already burned the back of his neck as he stepped off the platform
and into the street.

The houses here were old, roofs sagging or covered with cheap plastic siding, textured to look like wood
and lapped to shed rain. It was more prosperous than the no-man's-land belt around the city center, but
not by much. Vegetables grew in most of the tiny yards, downspouts fed hand-dug cisterns and small,
semi-legal stands offered vegetables, home-made fruit drinks, snacks, and various services —much like
the street vendors on his block, but out here, the customers came to the vendors and not the other way