Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World
- Автор: Мосли Уолтер
- Год: 2001
- Язык: английский
- Год: Aspect / Warner Books
- ISBN: 978-0-446-52954-9
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World». Краткое содержание книги:
Bits began to fall forward and the screen went to blank green. After a moment two gray option lines appeared. The first was called THE ORIGINAL REPORT ON THE PRACTICES OF ANGEL’S ISLAND. The second option was THE CHEMSYS PROJECTED GROWTH IN THE BEHAVIOR MOD SECTION REPORTS.
Meena and Fidor sat motionless and quiet before the bright green screen.
“Can we delete it?” Fidor asked after a while.
“I don’t know. The controls are frozen.”
“How about severing the power?”
“The emergency systems will override,” the chubby, brown-skinned young woman replied.
“What can we do?” the young man asked.
“Did you excite the virus with an entry?”
“No. I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Neither did I. It must have been the interaction of programs in the system, or maybe a timer that caused this action.”
“So?”
“So no one knows that we were here. We could just leave. Come back later and report a systems glitch. Maybe even somebody else will find it in the meantime.”
They stood together and backed away from the console. They turned as one and walked from the room.
The Electric Eye
1
Folio Johnson was sitting at his usual table at Hallwell’s China Diner on Lower Thirty-third Street reading the Daily Dump on a tiny pocket screen. The high-res zircon imager was eight centimeters square and could display a maximum of five hundred lines of data at one time. Where most people decreased the display mode to eight or twelve lines per screen, Folio, with the help of his blue synthetic eye, read at maximum density. First he read the general International News Agency (INA) stories that the Dump supplied. There had been a 14 percent decrease in murders topside — above Common Ground — in the past ten-day span. The Mars colonization program was continuing even though the voters had made it clear in the monthly Internet poll that they did not want their tax money used in that way.
The Dump was an unauthorized news agency run by Pacific Rim anarchists and so a back story was supplied for each INA release. The murder rate in Common Ground had increased over 97 percent in the last three spans due to political unrest. This unrest had been caused, the anarchists claimed, by outside agitators paid by MacroCode America. The increase in crime was used to convince the White House that an interplanetary colonization plan would ease the burden on the labor cycles and reduce the cost of policing.
“What do you think, D’or?” Folio asked the small woman who stood behind the counter.
“About what?”
“You think Kismet wants to make Mars his new home?”
“You readin’ that Dump again? One day they’re gonna put you in the ground over that shit.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of freedom of the press?”
“They got prisons offshore that link you up to a chemical bag can make you into jelly if you sneeze outta turn,” D’or said. “That’s what I heard.”
D’or Hallwell’s blond-gray hair went straight out from her head, making her look quite mad. She wore a black T-shirt and a long, dark brown skirt every day while serving Chinese-American food to anyone who stopped by her eight-seat hole-in-the-wall.
“You scared, D’or?”
“Fear is the tenth intelligence quotient,” she said. “All the scientists say so. The more you’re scared of what can hurt you, the smarter you are.”
“Then I must be a la-la fool and you my face in the mirror.”
The small restaurateur shook her head and smiled. Johnson mimicked her movements and expression. She moved her head to the right and Folio matched it with a leftward nod. When she put her hands to her head he followed suit. Then they both laughed.
“Excuse me,” a man said.
Folio and D’or both turned to the door.
A slender young man stood there in a black and yellow checkered andro-suit with no blouse or tam. His skin was pale and his blond hair so fine that it set Folio’s teeth on edge.
“Bok choy, tofu, and oyster sauce is all I got today, M,” D’or said without apology. “Chicken and frog strike’ll last at least another twenty-four.”
“Are you M Johnson?” the blond man asked. “The investigator?”
D’or turned away and walked through a door that led to the kitchen.
“Who’s askin’?” was Folio’s reply.
The man approached the detective’s table and sat down, uninvited.
“A man named Lorenzo gave me your name for fifty general credits. I need someone to do something for me. He said that you were my man.”
Folio’s blue eye had already searched the man for eavesdropping devices. Now he was probing for anything else: the influence of drugs, rapid heartbeats, or synthetic implants. All he perceived was synthol and lime flavoring, a lot of it. It was surprising this man could stand up or compose a coherent sentence.
“Well?” asked the drunk. “Are you M Johnson?”
“What’s your name?”
“Spellman. Charles Spellman. I live on Upper Park, at a Hundred and Third.”
“So, M Spellman, what did you tell this Lorenzo?”
“Are you Folio Johnson?”
“I, M Spellman, am an unaffiliated citizen. Not from Common Ground and not off the employment cycle. This is my office and the woman who owns this restaurant is my friend. It’s one of only five independently owned restaurants in all the Twelve Fiefs of New York.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I’m not really here. Neither is this bistro. If you have something to say then say it” — Folio Johnson fluttered his fingers — “to the air. But don’t ask any questions. Save them for the upper avenues.”
“I don’t...” Charles Spellman said and then he stopped. “I mean, I understand what you’re saying. I mean, I am on the employment cycle, though I’ve been lucky enough to avoid Common Ground. But I belong to a club. We call ourselves the Seekers. It’s ten guys, only guys, who get together now and then to exercise our minds.”
Johnson’s blue eye was busy searching the public data-banks for Charles Spellman and his men’s club.
“Um,” Spellman said when he realized that the private detective wasn’t going to ask anything, “we get together, like I said, and talk about ideas. We come from all kinds of different business backgrounds. I lease and insure ancient Greek artifacts. Coins, busts, earthenware. Regular kinda stuff. Mostly I deal with interior decorators for corporations but I also have a few private clients...” Again Charles Spellman paused, expecting some kind of question.
Johnson silently went through the e-docs that described Spellman’s service, Alexander’s Bounty. He had customers around the world and offices on Middle West Broadway, Lefrak Avenue, and Rodeo Drive. He was an employee but his cousin Mylo Spellman owned the business.
“The others do different things. Leonard Li is an accountant for Mobil Fuels and Brenton Thyme makes lenses for space exploration. Do you need to know more?”
“I don’t need to know anything, M,” Johnson said. “And nothing so far has been important enough to say.”