"Michael Marshall Smith - Dying" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Michael Marshall)

They’d held the MegaMall for us, and it rose as soon as we were inside. We
stood by the window, watching the city fall away below us, and that kept us
occupied for a while. The Mall took about five minutes to get up to 30,000 feet, then
paused before starting its steady progress forward. As soon as we were over the
ocean we turned away from the view.
“Christ,” said Miranda. “Now what do we do.”
“We shop. We stroll. We mingle with passing holiday-makers and exchange
pleasantries.”
“The fuck we do,” Chen said tersely. “We drink coffee and smoke a lot. This
way.”
The middle level of the Mall was crowded, and it took us a while to thread our
way to an escalator to the higher galleries. A man juggling oranges passed us on the
way up. They appeared to be on fire. Chen stared at him with some enmity.
“Street theater, compliments of the airline,” I said. “Very popular this year.”
“Not with me it isn’t.”
“How long is this going to take?” Miranda asked. She was craning her neck
and looking down across the Mall. About a thousand people flocked and wandered
around the lower tiers.
“Two hours.”
“Shit.” She glanced at me, looking drawn. I shrugged. This was only her
second call-out, and already she was beginning to understand. However quickly we
moved, it wasn’t quickly enough.
We found a coffee bar with a balcony and sat looking out over the main
concourse. We sat in silence for the most part, though Miranda and I talked a little
about how the arrangements would go once we got there. I didn’t have to talk to
Chen about that kind of thing. He knew. He sat a little apart, staring straight ahead,
and waited out the flight. I knew what he’d be thinking.
Five years ago when fairly drunk, Chen and I had sat down with some old
maps and tried to work out where a real sighting might be most likely to come from.
We’d taken into account the way the Cities had developed, climatic conditions,
previous populations, everything that might be relevant, and a few things which
definitely weren’t. In the end we’d honed in on what used to be called the Congo,
now just another region of AfriCity. Since then there’d been nothing from the region,
and we’d sort of forgotten about it. Now, of course, that’s exactly where we were
going. In a way I wished Miranda would go away for awhile, do some shopping or
something. But only briefly, and only because of that drunken night. I was glad
Miranda was there. She deserved to be as much as we did.
About half an hour in, a uniformed flunky approached the table, holding a
phone. It was for Chen. He listened and nodded, shifting himself around in the
wicker chair. Then he replaced the handset and tipped the phoneboy. Neither
Miranda nor I spoke. Neither of us wanted to hurry the news that we might as well
turn straight round at the other end.
“Well,” said Chen, eventually, lighting yet another cigarette. “The photo’s
genuine.”
“But?” I said, as professionally as I could.
“But as for the object, they can’t tell.”
I nodded. Miranda turned to me.
“What is it with you guys? Why do you have to keep doing this? You heard
the man: It’s genuine.”
“It could be a genuine model. A genuine fake.”