"Alexander Jablokov - Dead Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jablokov Alexander)

“I call it something I saw.”

“You saw this one too?”

A pause. “Sure. I had to look. Made me late to work. Would you pass it by?”

“I wouldn’t pass it by, but I wouldn’t know what to do with it either.”

I snuck a glance, even though I didn’t want the dead man to know I was
paying attention to him. A pair of frog legs stuck out of freshly rolled asphalt. I
couldn’t figure out how she’d done it, but it really looked like steam still rose from
the pitch. The spotted legs gleamed with pond.

“Well, I didn’t either. Boss says it puts people off their feed.”

“He still lets you hang it.”

“He’s got to, doesn’t he? Who else would work here?”

The dead man’s body had been through a crash into a bridge abutment and a
lot of fugitive life he could in no way have been expecting. He looked pretty good,
considering, even heavy, with a roll pushing out against his corduroy shirt. When I
got hired, I’d spent a bit of time talking to the dead man’s uploaded personality. His
voice had been synthetic, so I hadn’t been able to get any clues about what his body
would be like from that. He’d sent me a picture of someone a few years younger
than he’d been when he had supposedly died. Vanity never disappears, I guess, even
when the body does.

Although this body had not. That was the problem I’d been hired to fix. I
hefted the bag that carried the upload gear I’d be using on him. Not quite barbells,
but it was heavy.

It kept me in shape.

****

Near Monticello, Utah
 “What are you drinking?” the speaker asked from the railing where I’d
balanced it.

“Bourbon.”

“I always liked bourbon.”

“What do you do now instead?”

“I still have the taste, but it makes no sense to me now.”

I swirled the bourbon in my china teacup, wondering if the mike mounted
behind the speaker was sensitive enough to pick up the slosh.