"Cory Doctorow - The Super Man and Bugout" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dodd Christina)

The chanting got louder as they neared the security cordon around the Convention
Centre. The different groups all mingled as they massed on the opposite side of
the barricades. The Quakers and the vets sang "Give Peace a Chance," while
Thomas and his cohort prowled around, distributing materiel to various trusted
individuals.

The students hollered abuse at the attendees who were trickling into the
Convention Centre in expensive overcoats, florid with expense-account breakfasts
and immaculately groomed.

Hershie's appearance silenced the crowd. He screamed in over the lake, banked
vertically up the side of the CN Tower, and plummeted downward. The
demonstrators set up a loud cheer as he skimmed the crowd, then fell silent and
aghast as he touched down on the _opposite_ side of the barricade, with the
convention-goers. A cop in riot-gear held the door for him and he stepped
inside. A groan went up from the protestors, and swelled into a wordless,
furious howl.

#

Hershie avoided the show's floor and headed for the green room. En route, he was
stopped by a Somali general who'd been acquitted by a War Crimes tribunal, but
only barely. The man greeted him like an old comrade and got his aide to snap a
photo of the two of them shaking hands.

The green room was crowded with coffee-slurping presenters who pecked furiously
at their comms, revising their slides. Hershie drew curious stares when he
entered, but by the time he'd gotten his Danish and coffee, everyone around him
was once again bent over their work, a field of balding cabbages anointed with
high-tech hair-care products.

Hershie's palms were slick, his alien hearts throbbing in counterpoint. His
cowlick wilted in the aggressive heat shimmering out of the vent behind his
sofa. He tried to keep himself calm, but by the time a gofer commed him and
squirted directions to the main ballroom, he was a wreck.

#

Hershie commed into the feed from the demonstration in time to see the Quakers
sit, en masse, along the barricade, hands intertwined, asses soaking in the
slush at the kerbside. The cops watched them impassively, and while they were
distracted, Thomas gave a signal to his crew, who hastily unreeled a
stories-high smartscreen, the gossamer fabric snapping taut in the wind as it
unfurled over the Convention Centre's facade.

The cops were suddenly alert, moving, but Thomas was careful to keep the screen
on his side of the barricade. Tina led a team of high-school students who spread
out a solar collector the size and consistency of a parachute. It glinted in the