2023-01-19 03:51:28
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Corporation 36
I haven't been here for a long time. Probably as long ago as he became a slinker again. Or a persecutor, if you use corporate newspeak. Whatever you call it, a person of my profession is in no hurry to return to the places of former glory, because he firmly knows that only black shadows of the past are waiting for him there, from which there is a lot of pain and a little or even less money.A good client is a new client. A good place is one where no one knows you.Simple job - came, sniffed, left. But sometimes there are such circumstances that like it or not, you agree.Return. Breathe in the rancid air of the Megapolis again. Again raise your face to the sky and be surprised at what you see. You don't really see.Memory is a traitorous thing. How many revolutions have passed since you stood in this very place, looking at the silent four from under your brows. Romulus, Ulysses, Urban and Cora. Creatures whom the language did not dare to call people. On that day, they also returned to
Corporation 37
The towers were designed taking into account centuries of operation, under the standard size of the bot, which, in turn, repeated the human dimensions in that frequent case when even the most intelligent technology began to give in to beyond design anomalies. Simply put, the towers were built so that a Slinker like me could get into every corner of them. The question was only in sufficient skill and the presence of an exoskeleton.Under the strained buzz of the actuators, I methodically fingered with power gloves along the brackets of the fasteners inside the technical well in the very thickness of one of the towers of the two-headed complex. The scanners on the back of the neck successfully translated the structure of communications around me into the visual channel, successfully supplementing the scheme previously received through their persecutor channels with relevant information.The Guild, in addition to actually servicing orders, has long served as a kind of exchange of gray, a
Corporation 38
The choice of car was a mistake.A heavy but well-traveled Toyota can come in handy at long distances, but here, in the labyrinth of an abandoned place in the middle of century-old industrial zones, agility and secrecy were more important. If only they could guess how far this flight would take them.A short look behind.The client continued, biting her lips, scratching her knuckles with her nails, tearing them literally into blood. At the same time, her face remained stony and pale to blue. Not a good sign, not a good one at all.She was ordered to be taken away from the safe house on the lower tiers of the residential Bauhaus near the very borders of the Megapolis. It’s not unusual how many times it was necessary to rescue endangered witnesses and fugitive agents into remote refugio like this, almost always they twitched, cried, rejoiced, joked nervously, but just did not remain silent.And the rescued in the bulk did not give the impression of a puppet, pushed under the hands of an
Corporation 39
Patience. Even if he didn't have the patience. The defendant is armed to the teeth, the augmentation is heated to the fullest, but everything that he now sees around him does not give rise to the slightest degree of suspicion in him, only notes of displeasure that they make him wait. Well, really, there are no traces of external surveillance or parasitic traffic around, she - and what is she, no serious augmentation, the lowest link in the corporate food chain, just a person who had the luck to cut down the dough in an easy way. To expect some kind of trick from her is how paranoid you have to be.And here is her colleague.Mekk appeared in the door noiselessly, like a shadow, but the defendant, on her orders, heard, as it were, real steps along the corridor, a real squeak of a castle, a real breath noise. This is a very simple trick if you live in a crystal world. The ringing of razor-sharp edges sounded like music in her ears.What happened?They got there before me.Who? "Seiko"? P
Corporation 40
Portholes on the "Atreyu" was not provided at all. On the one hand, what are you going to look overboard, the plutoids beyond the orbit of Sedna here, at a distance of fifty ticks from Sol, gave a maximum of the third magnitude, and in order to see them with the naked eye against the backdrop of starlight, you would first have to sit locked up for half an hour with the attendant turned off lighting. On the other hand, the regular fifteen revolutions per hour would give such a fierce attack of vertigo when looking outside that an idle navigator who decided to stare outward would quickly get sick of green elephants.And who needs these windows. Cylindrical cabin "Atreyu", according to the creators' plan, was equipped in a circle with virtreals of the highest detail, which, without unnecessary urges to visit the latrine out of turn, provided the navigator with both an excellent overview and augmented reality, and did not blind the eyes of Sol's annoying lantern, which, although it looked
Corporation 41
Snorting under his breath, Stegenga made sure that the eclipse recording was securely copied to the onboard infoguard's personal repository for further packet transmission to Matushka, and only then did he hear some screams behind the bulkhead. It seems that it was Van der Boer yelling, while in the second voice, probably, Toptun howled this unpretentious aria, who else would be there.Here are the restless ones.Having hastily handed over the watch to the "iron woodcutter", Stegenga jumped off the duty navigator's lodgement and rushed to the membrane of the main hatch with wide jumps - to separate.The fight was already in full swing. Van der Boer, a short stature, jumped around Toptun, towering over him like a stone cliff, while both of them yelled in chorus "you have no right" and "I order you." All this was very exciting and even carried some traces of meaningfulness - judging by the aiming of his jumps, Van der Boer had as his goal to grab something from Toptun's hands, which he
Corporation 42
It snowed for the second ten sols.If on a godforsaken planetoid that does not even have the rudiments of an atmosphere, there can be normal precipitation in general. The five-hundred-yard blades of a scoop at the bottom of the Echo Quarry, fifty miles to the northeast, did not slow down around the clock, raising clouds of icy dust to the zenith, which glittered like a crown ring in the sunlight at dawn, spreading around the area in a white shroud and finally settling at under your feet.Wilkes cleared his throat automatically. To old men like him, the white powder on the reinforced boots was like a different story, not quite as colorful and not quite as festive looking.Three nuclear bombs laid by the Tanno brothers in old workings near the Ruben Grottoes. Idiots did not listen to exhortations. Our land and the whole story.The land mines gasped so that they brought to the surface from one and a half megatons of stone chips, so inopportunely fused into the ice just at the very epicen
Corporation 43
Here is the character. It's always been that way for as long as Wilkes can remember it. When a cryoclastic flow almost flattened Fusco in 1965, Jen had to be dragged out of the cab of the excavator by almost force. Her eyes are drowsy, her head dangles like a doll's, her hands are shaking from fatigue, but all the same. Every time I sent her to eat and sleep in the dome, I had to persuade her. Not a man, flint.Wilkes obediently slowed down, watching the beacon approach. Look, hurry up.Through the halo of snow, one could barely make out how a gray shadow galloped over the crests of faults, throwing fountains of snow drifts with its drive wheels.“Be careful, Jen, where you fly like that, you will kill yourself.”The rover skidded the last hundred yards, spraying Wilks' shell with a stream of flowing ice sand so that the visor had to be wiped down.But go and she herself, you can’t see her face, of course, but in terms of the plasticity of movements - you can’t confuse it with anyone.
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Epilogue
Deprived of the present - does not live, deprived of the past - was not even born. I don’t remember who said so, all these books merged into one mess for me during the flight. But, returning in my thoughts to my life on Earth, I cannot help but think about the Corporation, and I cannot help but think about the fate that brought me to the Corporation. The place where I grew up has long ceased to be a sleepy town far from the big and noisy world, the suburbs of the metropolis have moved in on it, comparing hills and raising faceless towers of cheap high-rise housing around. The black cubes of factory buildings, lined with light-absorbing tiles, seemed to be the focus of secrets in the dark and musty chaos of thousands of people who were not interested in anything; no one thought about it. I hardly remember when Corporations appeared in our lives. Sometimes I feel like they've always been there. The faceless masters of the world, at first they were somewhere far, far away. Not here. Per
82
The roof breathed a thick smell of hot metal, the sun was so hot that even the familiar tropics of the lower levels seemed like a resort from the coast of the Northern Ocean. In such places, in the middle of the realm of dusty iron and a web of wires creaking in the barely perceptible wind, a normal person will not linger. And if you remember the composition of the local air, full of carbon monoxide rather than oxygen, you involuntarily catch yourself thinking - why did you get here, run away from here, run ...There was little use for these thoughts. The introduction says clearly - the "patient" will try to break through here, and you should not worry about his plans, sweat between your shoulder blades and dry concrete crumb under your tongue. Whatever he is looking for here - he should not pass by. Neither alive nor already dead. If you do your job, you will head north, or even south, across the sea - it is dry there, there is no eternal smell of rivers rotting in the concrete bowel
81
The drowned city was empty again, and did not really have time to become a new home for immigrants from the Megapolis, which surrendered under the pressure of the Glacier. Until quite recently, life was in full swing here, shuttles took the last pax from the gravity well, heavy trucks delivered here and unfolded giant cubes of fabricators, but now everything was quiet, and only the quiet lapping of the waves of the Tethys Sea beat against the metal-polymer supports of the newly erected towers here.- Are you happy? she asked that day with what he thought was sincere curiosity.- Satisfied with what?“Because we leave this world alone.“Ah, that,” Romulus shrugged, “I will be pleased when they leave me alone. And Mother, she still does not hear us. She doesn't care what we think about her.- Stupid humanity tired even the all-powerful Romulus.- Don't bother with words. You have only lived with this for a quarter of a millennium, but I have been dealing with people for more than four h
80
Romulus climbed along the ridge with a measured step, from time to time looking back at the stone labyrinth of the Megapolis slowly plunging into the blue haze.Here, fifty kilometers from the edge of the Glacier, it looked quite familiar, if you do not remember how deep into the multi-year snow layers these stone skeletons now go. Towers, Bauhaus and palazzos sink deeper and deeper into the compressed ice pack every year. Go get it.Nothing, the fabricators have already reached the product capacity, releasing a million of their hardworking rats a day to the borders of the agglomeration.Romulus watched them work with his own eyes yesterday. Three individuals fiercely fought for a kilogram stub of monothread steel, zealously grinding their diamond cutters on it, only sparks flew around.These mechanical laborers will open any deposits of debris, make their way into the very hodgepodge of ceilings, dig their way into the depths of permafrost, but in the end they will wipe this abscess
79
We have seen a new humanity. People are weakened, divided, they will be even more crushed by the Age Outside, but sooner or later, one way or another, they will begin their expansion. But until that moment they cannot be left alone with Romulus. They need to be kicked in the ass into the Galaxy and locked up within the boundaries of the Barrier as much as possible.The guest thought, now for a long time. The clouds grew darker, the sunset faded, the snowflakes hit her cheek more and more painfully, and she stood still and was silent. Finally, when she spoke again, her voice was cold and formal.“I will speak to the soorn-infarh. But I don't promise anything.The redhead bowed again.“We couldn’t have hoped for more, wise one.” But I can see that something is bothering you.“Romulus confuses me. Will he fall into such a trivial trap?- Who knows who knows. Perhaps they themselves want to be deceived.The guest gave a short nod and moved away, through the oncoming gusts of a piercing no
78
The three from the chest were comfortably seated at the very edge of the cliff. One of them, a tall, desperately red-haired old man, waved his arms all the time, trying to jump up and run, in every possible way depicting general excitement. The other two, on the contrary, reclined comfortably in hammocks, pulling their blankets up to their chins, and hardly moved. A slight, but at the same time filled with internal contentment, a smile wandered on the face of both.All three would look very suspicious to an outsider's eye - what fate brought them to this windy land and what was the purpose of their today's observation, even the most desperate detective could not figure out, even if one happened so far south of Maharashtra.But in fact, there was no one here for a long time and reliably. The Goan land lay empty, and only the cold winter wind carried dust whirlwinds along these once populous lands, throwing handfuls of sand in the face of a random oncoming one.But these three were not
77
And what, it's even reasonable on their part. Less emotion, less stigma, less inevitable exophobia. It makes less sense to talk about something.Inside the makeshift conference room, to which the gateway led, already gathered, meanwhile, quite decently people. Apparently, their shuttle did not arrive first.It is necessary to get out somewhere far away to the side, very few people here would like to see him alive, let alone face to face. However, he was lucky, there was still a pleasant exception.- Companion Urban.— Ilmari Olsson.Both nodded briefly to each other, but not at all in the way that Lilia nodded to him when they met. Two intense gazes, clinging for a second in the surrounding crowd, managed to show each other enough emotions to immediately calmly part. Unlike the Companion of Ulysses, they always knew how to disperse peacefully with Urban. Of all the Companions, only Jean Armal still retained a certain amount of humanity. After all, only he knew what it was like to phys
76
The evacuated moon domes were far more depressing than he had expected. Live on Krasnaya for a couple of dozen turns, and you will no longer be surprised by its lifeless expanses. The lifestyle there was such that everyone seemed to be afraid of both this sand and each other. For a thousand sols you can not meet a single living soul, only chains of heavy copters stretching in the bloody skies remind that this world is inhabited by someone. But Muna... Muna in his memories was always a grandiose covered anthill, where everyone was in a hurry somewhere. The main staging post of the Sol system has remained the true heart of the Sol system since its inception.So it was before Ceres. And so it was before the Arrival.Now, looking at the empty galleries inside the domes and the cleared launch pads beyond, he only thought about what they had missed.What happened to the people who once set foot on the gray lunar regolith in the hope of developing a new frontier? The easiest way was to say t
75
The onboard observatory of the flagship, although it was focused on tracking objects located no further than a hundred kilometers from the Sun, nevertheless, gave a background image rich in details and colors, enriched with spectra outside the visible range from microwave to hard X-ray inclusive. The resulting composite panoramic banner only at first glance resembled the familiar picture of the starry sky - the former tracer did not need to be reminded of what deep space usually looks like to the naked eye. The white pupil of the distant Sun and the barely noticeable points of the brightest stars plus the planets, that's the whole poor visual range. Immediately at the disposal of the navigator, free from other activities, was given the multi-colored world of the contours of the Galaxy and entire star placers of the nearest cluster.When looking at this rich panel, made up of billions of stars, gas clouds, globular clusters and nebulae of the nearest galaxies, for once it became clear
