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Dr Who [Lethbridge Stewart] Andy Frankham Allen (v5.0) (epu
Content Selected Essays on Tech Cory Doctorow
Amazing Doctor Darwin Charles Sheffield
Brian Moore The Doctor's Wife (epub)
Bite My Cookies [Who Needs Chri Joyee Flynn
Doctor MC Three More Wishes Be Kind To Y
Doctor Rat William Kotzwinkle
Doctor No Ian Fleming
Battles, Brett Jonathan Quinn Todesjagd
Coe, Jonathan Die ungeheuerliche Einsamkeit d

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.Ramadan, her age, with inky eyes and his hair dyed white to look fashionably alien.He was a shifter, he told her, a data thief.He couldn’t get work because of his criminal record, so he kept on shifting information here and there, doing a little courier work, looking for a way off the planet.Yusuf, a grizzled old survivor at sixty eight going on a hundred, who kept offering her swigs from his ever present bottle of gin.She kept declining, but still sat with him so he could regale her with tales of his glorious misspent youth, all his adventures.He’d always been a promising child, his mother had told him, and the pride with which he kept revealing this nugget of information over and over made it sound as though he honestly believed he’d start fulfilling that promise any day now.Two centuries and Christ knew how many light years from home, but this city had something in common with her time, her town.There were still people who the haves really didn’t give a damn about.Tidy up, wash up, dry up, seven mornings a week, two hundred and eighty seven days a year.Scraping a cold film of porridge from the bottom of the kettles and putting it into a bowl for the mangy cat.A bit of a wash and then off to seek gainful employment.The locals were mostly olive or dark skinned, rarely as pale as she was.Or blue skinned and white haired; Lacaillans moving gracefully through the crowds.A Caxtarid buzzed by on a bicycle as Sam headed for the bus stop, the man’s electric red hair a bunding flash in the morning glare.The worst part was always trying to get the money for the bus.She went to a different stop every morning.And she told the precise truth.‘Hi, I have to get to a job interview – do you have a transport token you could spare? Thanks anyway.Hi, I have to get to a job interview – do you have a transport token you could spare? Never mind, have a good day! Hi–’It took her fifteen minutes this morning.Sometimes it had been almost the end of rush hour before some kind or possibly intimidated soul plucked out a token and handed it to her.She always smiled her gratitude.She always felt like complete and total dirt.The bus landed.Sam climbed aboard, deciding that she’d be walking home this afternoon.The ornithopter rose slowly from the ground with its load of passengers, giving her a bird’s eye view of the crowd and the bikes, a bunch of market stalls crammed on to one street corner, then the rooftops of El Nath.A week ago she had got her RAIN.It had taken three weeks for the application to be processed – mostly, explained the polite woman on the phone, because there was no computer record of her, anywhere.But she had it now.Her Resident Alien Identification Number.That meant she could start applying for real jobs.Now she existed.Without the shelter, she couldn’t have done it – she had to have a permanent address to apply.The first day of the rest of your life, she thought.The bus let her out a few blocks from the agency.It was an intimidating chunk of stone on one corner, narrow steps leading up to glass doors.She felt unbelievably grotty in the same shirt, the same pair of jeans.Cleaning them didn’t help: they were fraying.Sara had at least loaned her a fairly nice jacket, but that was just a fresh coat of paint slapped on to a house that had almost rotted through.She managed to look confident right up until a little man in a little office started to hammer her with questions.‘Previous job history?’‘I’ve, uh, never had a paying job before.’ Sam looked around his office.Here she was in space in the future, and people still had offices, desks, computer terminals, clutter, and signs that insisted that you didn’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helped.‘I did spend three years organising the school Amnesty Chapter.‘I’m afraid there’s not many managerial positions open to eighteen year olds,’ he said.Sam smiled her polite smile.Either he was laughing with her, or laughing at her, and either way this couldn’t be good.‘I’ll take anything,’ she said.‘Anything but food service, I mean.I’m a hard worker and I’m eager to do well.’‘Any references?’She sighed.‘I think they’re all dead by now.’The man nodded sympathetically.‘You arrived with the refugees from Mu Camelopides, didn’t you?’She stared at him.‘How do you know?’‘Your RAIN,’ he said.‘It indicates your date of arrival.Well, never mind about references.How many languages do you speak?’‘Just the one.’ She could see the wrong answer shutters falling over his eyes, so she added, ‘Little bit of French.’ That only made it sound more pathetic.‘No Hebrew, Standard Arabic, Yiddish?’‘No.’‘Azerbaijani, Amharic, or Farsi?’‘No.’ Her voice seemed to have shrunk.‘I don’t suppose any Reshtke, Argolin, Martian, or any of the Kapteynian languages?’‘Just English,’ said Sam.Once I could speak any language in the universe, she thought – and now I’m down to one.‘And a little bit of French.’The man shifted in his seat.He didn’t seem amused any more.‘Can you use an eye terminal?’When she looked blank, he tapped his stylus on the device attached to his laptop.Sam looked at it.She’d seen them around – a sort of arm with a lens on the end.The operator pulled it down in front of one eye while they worked at the computer.She didn’t know what they were for.She shook her head.‘Can you file?’Sure! ‘Sure, I can handle it.’‘Which systems? Parabase? SQFM? Agent indexing?’‘What?’‘Which filing systems?’‘You got me there,’ she said, feeling her throat tighten.‘Ever driven a three two plexer?’‘No.’He was trying very hard not to sigh [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]