![Termination Shock [calibre 4.99.4] - Читать Любимую Русскую Полную Книгу 👉 Read-E-Book.com](/uploads/posts/books/1/9/3/5/termination-shock-calibre-4-99-4-download.jpg)
Termination Shock [calibre 4.99.4]
- Автор: Стивенсон Нил Таун
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HarperCollinsPublishers
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Termination Shock [calibre 4.99.4]». Краткое содержание книги:
“What the hell are you doing here?” asked Uncle Ed, after giving Willem a decent interval to unpack and get settled.
“Getting drunk,” Willem said, which was not wrong. He had found his way out to a sort of screened-in patio adjacent to the badminton court and uncorked a bottle of duty-free whiskey he had scored while changing planes in Jakarta. Not at the old airport, which was usually underwater, but at the new one they had just built on higher ground. Ed was finishing up a sweaty doubles match with some of the usual crew of Chinese gaffers. This was the coldest part of the year. It was a little above room temperature, but extremely humid. Willem was almost comfortable in a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. No rain was spattering the tin roof at the moment, but it had been recently and it would be soon.
“I thought you were going to be the prime minister of the Netherlands or something!”
“For a brief moment, it looked like it was on the table, but . . .” Willem sipped his whiskey and tried to remember that brief moment. For all its apparent stability, Dutch politics could be convoluted. It had been in—what—December? No, after the holidays. He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about all that stuff.”
“Instead you are retired. And you come . . . here!?” Ed looked around. “Don’t get me wrong, you are most welcome. Would you like some tea, or are you going to stick with whiskey?”
“Whiskey is fine, thank you.”
“Then I will smoke.” Ed knocked an unfiltered cigarette from a pack—some Chinese brand—and bit slightly into the middle, creating a tear in the paper. He put the cigarette in his mouth crosswise and lit both of the ends, a glowing coal projecting to either side as he inhaled through the central hole. In Papua it was not an unusual practice, but for new arrival Willem it took a little getting used to. “You said another person is coming? A woman?” Ed asked. He knew that Willem was gay and so there was an implicit question.
“Amelia Leeflang. Ex-military. She used to be on the queen’s security detail.”
“And now she is on yours?”
“I was told it might be a good idea.” Willem glanced out over Ed’s compound. At least two men could be seen strolling around in a sort of Brownian-motion style, picking out irregular paths to avoid puddles. Each had a pump shotgun slung over his shoulder. They looked Papuan. From the taller coastal tribes, Willem guessed. “Amelia has left the government payroll and is working for private clients now.”
“You mean she was fired?”
“The Netherlands holds its politicians to a very high standard. The royals as well. And the staff who surround those people.”
“Such as you.”
“Sometimes it is clear which way the wind is blowing. You don’t have to get fired to see that there might be other opportunities. Amelia joined a private firm.”
“Mercenaries?”
“If you will. I requested her by name.”
“Will she be staying here?”
“Is that a possibility?”
“I can have a trailer dropped over there.” Ed indicated an unfrequented corner of the lot. “She’ll need to talk to locals who know how things work here. I can get you in touch.”
“Papuans?”
Ed looked at him incredulously. “Australians.”
Willem took a sip of whiskey. Ed took a drag on his double-barreled cigarette. Exhaling, he said, “You’re not actually retired, are you?”
“In a sense, if you love your work, you’re never truly retired.”
“Are you going to make trouble for me? For the family business?”
“I’ve seen the numbers on the mine.” Willem nodded vaguely in the direction he thought most likely to be north. The mountains as usual were completely invisible behind a blank white sky. “Eventually the ore will run out—or become so difficult to extract that it can no longer compete on the world market.”
“Decades from now,” Ed said dismissively.
“You’ve been here for decades. It’s not that long. What happens to the family business then?”
Uncle Ed didn’t have a ready answer.
“Do you move to some other part of the world? Or stay here?”
“Why would we stay in this hellhole?” Ed asked. As if on cue, a gunshot sounded in the distance, then two more. The men with the shotguns did not seem to find this remarkable.
“Maybe something new happens.”
“Where?”
“Up there.” Willem nodded to the north again.
“What could possibly happen up there besides the copper mine?”
Willem got up, took a few steps across the patio, and stepped down to the gravel lot. He bent over and scooped up a handful of gray muck from the edge of a puddle. He held it up to the skeptical, bordering on worried, inspection of Uncle Ed. “Do you know what this is?”
“The shit that washes down from the mine. Tailings that don’t have enough copper to be worth refining.”
“Do you know what else it contains besides copper?”
“Gold. A tiny amount.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know, I’m not a geologist.”
“Sulfur.”
Ed snorted. “There are easier places to get sulfur, even I know that.”
“None that are so close to the stratosphere.”
COOLATTIN, BRITISH COLUMBIA
This time, Uncle, I’m headed downstream. Just following the flow of the river,” Laks said, “like a fry becoming a smolt.”
Uncle Dharmender crossed his arms across his belly and regarded Laks in a way that might best be described as alert. “Is that some kind of fish terminology? You forget I am not a fish guy.” He held up both hands as if to say look about you, boy! and then re-crossed his arms.
Laks didn’t need to look about himself. Now that he had got most of his long-term memory back he knew exactly where he was: a small town in British Columbia, on the banks of the Columbia River about twenty miles north of the Canada-U.S. border. When Laks had been a boy, Uncle Dharmender’s holdings here had been limited to a mere gas station, but a few years ago he had, during a COVID-related tourism slump, purchased the adjacent, down-at-heels resort and begun fixing it up one unit at a time.
“Resort” was a grand term. It was a rustic affair comprising a dozen small cabins scattered through woods surrounding a larger building that served as reception, kitchen, laundry, and banquet hall. In the latter facility, Aunt Gurmeet—the wife of Dharmender—and various cousins and family friends had accorded Laks a hero’s welcome this evening with a reception, a lavish meal, and a party hosted by a Punjabi MC/DJ team out of Vancouver.
When the guests had taken their leave, Dharmender and Laks had been deemed surplus to requirements and been shooed into the conference room. This was a B.C. classic with a stuffed bighorn ram’s head on the wall and curtains in a vintage North Woods print featuring ducks, moose, and men in plaid shirts paddling canoes.