"Уильям Гибсон. Virtual light (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

'Dunno,' Rydell said. 'I went to sleep.'

Sublett opened his eyes. 'Who was in it?'

'Got me.'

Sublett's blank silver eyes widened in disbelief. 'Jesus, Berry, you
shouldn't oughta watch tv, not unless you're gonna pay it attention.'





face="Arial">He wasn't in the hospital very long, after he shot Kenneth Turvey;
barely two days. His lawyer, Aaron Pursley himself, made the case that they should've kept
him in there longer, the better to assess the extent of his post-traumatic shock. But
Rydell hated hospitals and anyway he didn't feel too bad; he just couldn't recall exactly
what had happened. And he had Karen Mendelsohn to help him out with things, and his new
agent, Wellington Ma, to deal with the other people from Cops in Trouble, not one of them
as nice as Karen, who had long brown hair. Wellington Ma was Chinese, lived in Los
Angeles, and Karen said his father had been in the Big Circle gang-though she advised
Rydell not to bring it up.

Wellington Ma's business card was a rectangular slice of pink
synthetic quartz, laser-engraved with his name, 'The Ma-Mariano Agency,' an address on
Beverly Boulevard, and all kinds of numbers and e-mail addresses. It arrived by GlobEx in
its own little gray suede envelope while Rydell was still in the hospital.

'Looks like you could cut yourself on it,' Rydell said.

'You could, many no doubt have,' said Karen Mendelsohn, 'and if you
put it in your wallet and sit down, it shatters.'

'Then what's the point of it?'

'You're supposed to take very good care of it. You won't get
another.'

Rydell never actually did meet Wellington Ma, at least not 'til
quite a while later, but Karen would bring in a little briefcase with a pair of eyephones
on a wire and Rydell could talk with him iii his office in LA. It was the sharpest tele
presence rig Rydell had ever used, and it really did look just like he was right there. He
could see out the window to where there was this lopsided pyramid the color of a Noxzema
jar. He asked Wellington Ma what that was and Ma said it was the old Design Center, but
currently it was a discount mall, and Rydell could go there when he came to L.A., which
was going to be soon.

Turvey's girlfriend, Jenni-Rae Cline, was bringing an intricately
interlocking set of separate actions against Rydell, the Department, the City of
Knoxville, and the company in Singapore that owned her apartment building. About twenty