"Pat Cadigan - Death in the Promised Land" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cadigan Pat)
Pat Cadigan
The kid had had his choice of places to go-other countries, other worlds, even other universes, A la the legendary exhortation of e. e. cummings, oddly evocative in its day, spookily prescient now. But the kid's idea of a hell of a good universe next door had been a glitzed-out, gritted-up, blasted and blistered post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty. It wasn't a singular sentiment-post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty was topping the hitline for the thirteenth week in a row, with post-Apocalyptic Ellay and post-Apocalyptic Hong Kong holding steady at two and three, occasionally trading places but defending against all comers.
Dore Konstantin didn't understand the attraction. Perhaps the kid could
have explained it to her if he had not come out of post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty with his throat cut.
Being DOA after a session in the Sitty wasn't singular, either; immediate information available said that this was number eight in as many months. So far, no authority was claiming that the deaths were related, although no one was saying they weren't, either. Konstantin wasn't sure what any of it meant, except that, at the very least, the Sitty would have one more month at the number one spot.
The video parlor night manager was boinging between appalled and thrilled. "You ever go in the Sitty?" she asked Konstantin, crowding into the doorway next to her. Her name was Guilfoyle Pleshette and she didn't make much of a crowd; she was little more than a bundle of sticks wrapped in a gaudy kimono, voice by cartoonland, hair by Van de Graaff. She stood barely higher than Konstantin's shoulder, hair included.
"No, never have," Konstantin told her, watching as DiPietro and Celestine peeled the kid's hotsuit off him for the coroner. It was too much like seeing an animal get skinned, only grislier, and not just because most of the kid's blood was on the hotsuit. Underneath, his naked flesh was imprinted with a dense pattern of lines and shapes, byzantine in complexity, from the wires and sensors in the 'suit.
Yes, it's the latest in nervous systems, Konstantin imagined a chatty lecturer's voice saying. The neo-exo-nervous system, generated by hotsuit coverage. Each line and shape has its counterpart on the opposite side of the skin barrier, which cannot at this time be breached under pain of-
The imaginary lecture cut off as the coroner's cam operator leaned in for a shot of the kid's head and shoulders, forcing the stringer from Police Blotter back against the facing wall. Unperturbed, the stringer held her own cam over her head, aimed the lens downward and kept taping. This week, Police Blotter had managed to reverse the injunction against commercial networks that had been reinstated last week. Konstantin couldn't wait for next week.
As the 'suit cleared the kid's hips, the smell of human waste fought with the heavy odor of blood and the sour stink of sweat for control of the air in the room, which wasn't much larger than the walk-out closet that Konstantin had shared with her ex. The closet had looked a lot bigger this morning now that her ex's belongings were gone, but this room seemed to be shrinking by the moment. The coroner, her cam operator, the stringer, and DiPietro and Celestine had all come prepared with nasal filters; Konstantin's were sitting in the top drawer of her desk.
Putting her hand over her nose and mouth, she stepped back into the hallway where her partner Taliaferro was also suffering, but from the narrow space and low ceiling rather than the air, which was merely overprocessed and stale. Pleshette followed, fishing busily in her kimono pockets.
"So bad," she said, looking from Konstantin to Taliaferro. Taliaferro gave no indication that he had heard her. He stood with his back to the wall and his shoulders up around his ears, head thrust forward over the archiver while he made notes, as if he expected the ceiling to come down on him. From Konstantin's angle, the archiver was completely hidden by his hand, so that he seemed to be using the stylus directly on his palm.
Never send a claustrophobe to do an agoraphobe's job, Konstantin thought, feeling surreal. Taliaferro, who pronounced his name "tolliver" for reasons she couldn't fathom, was such a big guy anyway that she wondered if most places short of an arena didn't feel small and cramped to him.
"Real goddam bad, " Pleshette added, as if this somehow clarified her original statement. One bony hand came up out of a hidden pocket with a small spritzer; a too-sweet, minty odor cut through the flat air.
Taliaferro's stylus froze as his eyes swiveled to the manager. "That didn't help," he said darkly.
"Oh, but wait," she said, waving both hands to spread the scent. "Smellin' the primer now, but soon, nothing. Deadens the nose, use it by the pound here. Trade puts out a lot of body smell in the actioners. , Suits reek. " She gestured at the other doors lining the long narrow hall. "Like that Gang Wars module? Strapped the trade down on chaises, otherwise they'd a killed the ,suits, rollin' around on the floor, bouncin' off the walls, jumpin' on each other. Real easy to go native in a Gang Wars module."
Go native? Taliaferro mouthed, looking at Konstantin from under his brows. Konstantin shrugged. "I didn't see a chaise in there."
"Folds down outa the wall. Like those old Murphy beds?"
Konstantin raised her eyebrows, impressed that she was even acquainted with the idea of Murphy beds, and then felt mildly ashamed. Her ex had always told her that being a snob was her least attractive feature.
Konstantin shook her head.
"The cute part was, his pov was in this fight at the exact, same time and broke the exact, same ribs." Pleshette straightened up and folded her arms, lifting her chin defiantly as if daring Konstantin to disbelieve. "This's always been non-safe, even before it was fatal."
"That happen here?" Taliaferro asked without looking up.
"Nah, some other place. East Hollywood, North Hollywood, I don't remember now." The manager's kimono sleeve flapped like a wing as she gestured. "We all heard about it. Stuff gets around."
Konstantin nodded, biting her lip so she wouldn't smile. "Uh-huh. Is this the same guy who didn't open his parachute in a skydiving scenario and was found dead with every bone in his body shattered?"
"Well, of course not." Pleshette looked at her as if she were crazy. "How could it be? That blowfish died. We all heard about that one too. Happened in D.C. They got it going on in D.C. with those sudden-death thrillers." She leaned toward Konstantin again, putting one scrawny hand on her arm this time. "You oughta check D.C. sources for death-trips. Life's so cheap there. It's a whole different world."
Konstantin was trying to decide whether to agree with her or change the subject when the coroner emerged from the cubicle with the cam op right on her heels.
"-shot everything I shot," the cam op was saying unhappily.
"And I said never mind." The coroner waved a dismissive hand. "We can subpoena her footage and see if it really is better than yours. Probably isn't. Go." She gave him a little push.
"But I just know she's in some of my shots-"
"We can handle that, too. Go. Now." The coroner shooed him away and turned to Konstantin. She was a small person, about the size of a husky ten-year-old-something to do with her religion, Konstantin remembered, the Church of Small-Is-Beautiful. The faithful had their growth inhibited in childhood. Konstantin wondered what happened to those who lost the faith, or came to it later in life.
"Well, I can say without fear of contradiction that the kid's throat was cut while he was still alive." The coroner looked around. "And in a palace like this. Imagine that. "
"Should I also imagine how?" Konstantin asked.
The coroner smoothed down the wiry copper cloud that was her current hair. It sprang back up immediately. "Onsite micro says it was definitely a knife or some other metal with an edge, and not glass or porcelain. And definitely not self-inflicted. Even if we couldn't tell by the angle, this kid was an AR softie. He wouldn't have had the strength to saw through his own windpipe like that."
"What kind of knife, do you think?"
"Sharp and sturdy, probably a boning blade. Boning blades're all the rage out there. Or rather, in there. In the actioners. They all like those boning blades. "
Konstantin frowned. "Great. You know what's going to be on the news inside an hour."
The coroner fanned the air with one small hand. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gameplayers' psychosis, everybody's heard about somebody who got stabbed in a module and came out with a knife-wound it took sixteen stitches to close
and what about the nun who was on TV with the bleeding hands and feet. it's part of the modem myth-making machine. There've been some people who went off their perch in AR, got all mixed up about what was real and hurt themselves or somebody else. But the stigmata stuff-everybody
conveniently forgets how the stigmata of Sister-Mary-Blood-Of-The-Sacred-Whatever got exposed as a hoax by her own order. The good sister did a turn as a stage magician before she got religion. There's a file about how she did it floating around PubNet-you oughta look it up. Fascinatin' rhythms. The real thing would be extremo ruptura, very serious head trouble, which the experts are pretty sure nobody's had since St. Theresa."
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