[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Moments later they passed through the roof of the lobby and rushed up the side of the building with no apparent means of support.Their ascent took them in a graceful spiral, affording them a 360 degree view of the city, but as they continued to rise lesser buildings fell away leaving them alone to soar into the night.Aiyana clapped her hands and tried to look everywhere simultaneously but Carson just smiled and watched her face glowing in the reflected light.Eventually the climb slowed as they reached the glowing pinnacle.“Have a wonderful dinner!” Zaakir said as the peristaltic field eased them through the luminescent wall into the Aether.“Oh my!”They had emerged onto a translucent semicircular shelf set halfway up the wall of a cylindrical atrium.The whole space, perhaps eighty meters tall and twenty meters wide, glowed like a moonlit cloud.Immediately in front of them in the center of the semicircle was a linen-covered table where Juro sat deep in conversation with a member of the restaurant’s staff.Similar outcrops, each bearing a single table, spiraled round the atrium’s walls from top to bottom.A quartet of musicians, suspended in midair, orbited a central column of prismatic light that ascended throughout the huge space.Juro glanced up and gestured them to join him.“There you are! Come, the first bottle of wine has been selected.”Two staff appeared from nowhere to hold their chairs as they sat down.Another, a woman, also materialized.Her demeanor made their new friend Zaakir look positively grumpy.“Elder Juro, welcome once more to the Aether.Aiyana, Carson, we are delighted to greet new guests.Your first course will be with you momentarily.”A flunky filled their glasses.“We use water exclusively from Raj e” the woman continued “a glacier world of unparalleled purity.”Oh God, mused Carson, they ship water from another system?“Where’s the menu?” whispered Aiyana“Good Lord my dear” said Juro at his most avuncular “at the Aether you eat what you are given.Do not worry! You will not be disappointed.”Right on cue, three more servers appeared, each placing a small dish before the diners in perfect synchronization.Carson had worked out where the staff was coming from: they simply emerged out of the shining central column and floated across the gulf to the tables.Like the orbiting musicians, they had to be wearing some kind of lift belt.Looking again at what had been put before him he realized that ‘dish’ was hardly an adequate description.It was a diminutive piece of diamond coral in the form of a meta-seahorse.Its front paws held a tiny bowl of mother of pearl upon which were arranged a cluster of gleaming black spheres in a pearly emulsion.It would not have been out of place in the window of a jewelry store.“Chef Adega is so excited to be welcoming guests from Kaimana that he has prepared this seafood course in your honor.Malossol caviar in a puree of Kumamotos oysters, harvested from the Gulf of Qinghai this morning.Enjoy!”The woman and the three servers floated away, and so began what transpired to be the finest meal Carson had ever eaten.Not the most enjoyable – it was difficult to relax when one of your dinner companions was probably planning to murder you – but the inventiveness and quality of the food were beyond reproach.Intermittently, the sommelier approached and entered into a technical discussion with Juro.The invariable result was more wine.“What’s that being extracted from the bottle” Aiyana asked Carson “is it delicious?”“No darling, it’s called a cork, I’ll explain later.”She gazed round the atrium.“What do you think this is made of?” she asked, tapping her foot on the translucent floor.“Thick layers of compressed money”Juro laughed “Soon you will be able to dine here every night.”By now they were on their fourth bottle of wine, and Carson decided that the old man was sufficiently unwound to try a little probing.“I’m concerned that the sudden appearance of an enormous quantity of Old Earth artifacts will depress their price.”“You are right, my boy.I will release items very slowly, perhaps raising a mere ten billion a year.The market should be able to bear that rate indefinitely, and with just a fraction of the original cargo we will have enough for hundreds of years of sales.”Carson did the math.“That’s a trillion Ecus a century – you will be the richest man in history.”Juro waved his hand in ascent.“We are developing a sales strategy with Hobs Treys, New Earth’s premier auction house.Distinguished scholars such as yourself will publish academic papers on the unprecedented nature of the discoveries; selected media outlets will be given exclusive previews making the sale news in every major system; ultra-wealthy connoisseurs will be invited to private viewing of the artifacts and there will be talk of ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunities for those willing to make bold pre-emptive bids.The first auction will take place immediately before the release of the final episode of Exodus, of which Clan Aniko is a major corporate sponsor.In short, we will create a buying frenzy.”He finished by draining his wine glass and banging it down on the linen tablecloth.To Carson this was all bad news.Asima had said that the old man wanted the money to fund some kind of crazy revolution against the Covenant.The idea might be absurd but a trillion Ecus could finance no end of havoc.Juro was talking again.“You too will do very well.I shall award you and Kalidas a commission of one percent each.That will give you an income of one hundred million a year for the foreseeable future.Do you have any idea what wealth of such magnitude can bring? Each day, teams of people will meet for the sole purpose of making your life more pleasurable.”He sat back, eyes half closed.“You’re confident that Shin will be successful?”“Completely”“But this is what I don’t get” Carson persisted “it was only a week ago that we learned that the treasure even existed.It was a good bet that there was a second layer of audio on the Teng cassettes, but it could have contained anything [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Moments later they passed through the roof of the lobby and rushed up the side of the building with no apparent means of support.Their ascent took them in a graceful spiral, affording them a 360 degree view of the city, but as they continued to rise lesser buildings fell away leaving them alone to soar into the night.Aiyana clapped her hands and tried to look everywhere simultaneously but Carson just smiled and watched her face glowing in the reflected light.Eventually the climb slowed as they reached the glowing pinnacle.“Have a wonderful dinner!” Zaakir said as the peristaltic field eased them through the luminescent wall into the Aether.“Oh my!”They had emerged onto a translucent semicircular shelf set halfway up the wall of a cylindrical atrium.The whole space, perhaps eighty meters tall and twenty meters wide, glowed like a moonlit cloud.Immediately in front of them in the center of the semicircle was a linen-covered table where Juro sat deep in conversation with a member of the restaurant’s staff.Similar outcrops, each bearing a single table, spiraled round the atrium’s walls from top to bottom.A quartet of musicians, suspended in midair, orbited a central column of prismatic light that ascended throughout the huge space.Juro glanced up and gestured them to join him.“There you are! Come, the first bottle of wine has been selected.”Two staff appeared from nowhere to hold their chairs as they sat down.Another, a woman, also materialized.Her demeanor made their new friend Zaakir look positively grumpy.“Elder Juro, welcome once more to the Aether.Aiyana, Carson, we are delighted to greet new guests.Your first course will be with you momentarily.”A flunky filled their glasses.“We use water exclusively from Raj e” the woman continued “a glacier world of unparalleled purity.”Oh God, mused Carson, they ship water from another system?“Where’s the menu?” whispered Aiyana“Good Lord my dear” said Juro at his most avuncular “at the Aether you eat what you are given.Do not worry! You will not be disappointed.”Right on cue, three more servers appeared, each placing a small dish before the diners in perfect synchronization.Carson had worked out where the staff was coming from: they simply emerged out of the shining central column and floated across the gulf to the tables.Like the orbiting musicians, they had to be wearing some kind of lift belt.Looking again at what had been put before him he realized that ‘dish’ was hardly an adequate description.It was a diminutive piece of diamond coral in the form of a meta-seahorse.Its front paws held a tiny bowl of mother of pearl upon which were arranged a cluster of gleaming black spheres in a pearly emulsion.It would not have been out of place in the window of a jewelry store.“Chef Adega is so excited to be welcoming guests from Kaimana that he has prepared this seafood course in your honor.Malossol caviar in a puree of Kumamotos oysters, harvested from the Gulf of Qinghai this morning.Enjoy!”The woman and the three servers floated away, and so began what transpired to be the finest meal Carson had ever eaten.Not the most enjoyable – it was difficult to relax when one of your dinner companions was probably planning to murder you – but the inventiveness and quality of the food were beyond reproach.Intermittently, the sommelier approached and entered into a technical discussion with Juro.The invariable result was more wine.“What’s that being extracted from the bottle” Aiyana asked Carson “is it delicious?”“No darling, it’s called a cork, I’ll explain later.”She gazed round the atrium.“What do you think this is made of?” she asked, tapping her foot on the translucent floor.“Thick layers of compressed money”Juro laughed “Soon you will be able to dine here every night.”By now they were on their fourth bottle of wine, and Carson decided that the old man was sufficiently unwound to try a little probing.“I’m concerned that the sudden appearance of an enormous quantity of Old Earth artifacts will depress their price.”“You are right, my boy.I will release items very slowly, perhaps raising a mere ten billion a year.The market should be able to bear that rate indefinitely, and with just a fraction of the original cargo we will have enough for hundreds of years of sales.”Carson did the math.“That’s a trillion Ecus a century – you will be the richest man in history.”Juro waved his hand in ascent.“We are developing a sales strategy with Hobs Treys, New Earth’s premier auction house.Distinguished scholars such as yourself will publish academic papers on the unprecedented nature of the discoveries; selected media outlets will be given exclusive previews making the sale news in every major system; ultra-wealthy connoisseurs will be invited to private viewing of the artifacts and there will be talk of ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunities for those willing to make bold pre-emptive bids.The first auction will take place immediately before the release of the final episode of Exodus, of which Clan Aniko is a major corporate sponsor.In short, we will create a buying frenzy.”He finished by draining his wine glass and banging it down on the linen tablecloth.To Carson this was all bad news.Asima had said that the old man wanted the money to fund some kind of crazy revolution against the Covenant.The idea might be absurd but a trillion Ecus could finance no end of havoc.Juro was talking again.“You too will do very well.I shall award you and Kalidas a commission of one percent each.That will give you an income of one hundred million a year for the foreseeable future.Do you have any idea what wealth of such magnitude can bring? Each day, teams of people will meet for the sole purpose of making your life more pleasurable.”He sat back, eyes half closed.“You’re confident that Shin will be successful?”“Completely”“But this is what I don’t get” Carson persisted “it was only a week ago that we learned that the treasure even existed.It was a good bet that there was a second layer of audio on the Teng cassettes, but it could have contained anything [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]