"Michael A. Stackpole - Shadowrun - Wolf and Raven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stackpole Michael A)

Dr. Raven would trust Wolfgang Kies with an assignment of this importance."

I smiled. "TM."

"Huh?"
I smiled more broadly. "I said, 'TM.' You forgot to add the trademark to the phrase, 'the Great Dr.
Raven.' " I shook my head ruefully. "That's why he sent me. You've got no manners and no sense of
propriety. You wouldn't expect him to come to a place like this, would you?"

Clearly, any space in Ronnie's monosynaptic brain devoted to humor was overloaded by my effort. His
eyes flashed on and off as he got angry and his concentration broke. Suddenly, with a metallic snap that
sounded like a pistol being cocked, a twenty-five-centimeter icepick blade shot out from between the
middle and ring fingers on his right hand and he lunged forward. The tip touched my throat right above
the silver wolf's-head totem I wear and drew a single drop of blood.

"I don't need your static, you drekling! Raven sent word that he wanted to make a deal with La Plante,
not the other way around. We're not doing you a favor—it's you that wants one from us." Killstar's dark
eyes narrowed. "I want Raven!"

With great effort I killed the urge to lunge forward and bite his face off. I swallowed hard and felt the
icepick brush against my Adam's apple. "I wanted La Plante. I would suggest we're even."

I forced my eyes open and got the surprise reaction I expected as Ronnie looked into them for the first
time. With the anger rising in me I knew they'd gone from green to silver—that change is not all that rare.
Ronnie got an added treat, though, as a dark circle surrounded each iris with a Killer Ring. Your
augmented eyes may let you see in the dark, but they can't do this. It's something you've got to
have inside—it's not an option you get to tack on aftermarket.

Ronnie leaned back, but left the stinger extended. "Maybe we are even. What are you offering Mr. La
Plante?"

I ignored the question as a droplet of sweat burned into the pinprick at my throat. "I want proof she's still
alive."

The punk snapped his fingers and one of the Buddha brothers produced a portacomp and slipped a small
optical disk into the unit. I took it from him and hit the Play button. The LCD screen flickered to life and I
saw Moira Alianha standing calmly before a wall screen trideo display. She moved back and forth in
front of it, and I concentrated on how her long black hair trailed out and through the image. If they'd
recorded her moving before a blank screen, then masked in a recent program to make me think she was
still alive, the process would have broken down on those fine details.

It looked clean to me, but I didn't want to give Ronnie the satisfaction of knowing I thought he'd done
something right. "A simchip would have been better."

It was an effort for him to roll his cybereyes to heaven. "And we could have brought her here with a
brass band and an army of grunges 3, but we don't think we're going to recover our overhead on this one.
Satisfied?"

I tapped the Disconnect and pocketed the device. "She's alive."