"Ken MacLeod - The Highway Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

that by the Tesco jacket on the back of his chair—leaned over and said to
the FedEx driver he shared the table with:

“Laggers. Too dumb tae draft.”

Coming from a trucker, that was a bit rich. I ignored it. I didn’t retort
with: “Truckers. Too feart tae fight.” I just strolled to the counter and
ordered a pot of Java and six bacon rolls.

Thing is, it would’ve been true. Trucking is a reserved occupation.
What that means is you can dodge the draft by being a truck driver. But the
trucker was right and all. Except that we are drafted. Only not for the army.
The army needs people who can handle high tech. Just the same as civilian
industries, all that Carbon Glen stuff. People who were good at school. The
rest of us—those who can’t or won’t hack it as soldiers or high-tech
workers—get swept up by the highway. There’s no going on the dole or the
sick these days. It’s my way or the Highway, like the First Minister used to
say.

Of course it’s not just building roads anymore. The old Highways
Department took over all the public works. One of them was insulation.
Lagging pipes was the first emergency job. Loads of insulation had to be
laid on in the last summer before the first Big Freeze. That’s why all of us
who work for the Highway are called laggers. Well, it’s one reason. The
other is that “lagger” used to be the swear word for people like us. It came
into fashion just after “neds” went out.

Not that I mind. I always wanted to be a lagger. Ever since I was
about eight years old, anyway. That was when some new plastic water
mains were laid in the street round the corner. Me and my wee gang were
tearaways. We weren’t as bad as folks said we were. OK, we did break all
the windows of the JCB digger one night. But we thought the guys who laid
the pipes were great. They had yellow plastic helmets and bright yellow
plastic waistcoats and big muddy boots. They looked tough. They looked
like we might want to be like them when we grew up. Them and fighter
pilots and the characters in grand theft auto. Guess what. You need
university to be a fighter pilot. Two of my pals died five years later doing
grand theft auto in real life. Handbrake turns don’t work so well on country
roads. Funny that.

Anyway.

Apart from the truckers the other people in the room giving us the eye
were locals. Five natives and five incomers. The natives were in their usual
suspicious huddle. They just gave us a long enough glance to figure out we
weren’t about to attack them. Then they turned away. Their backs were
about as welcoming as rolled-up hedgehogs.

Four of the white settlers sat in a more relaxed way around another
table. Two couples, I guessed. English accents, or maybe posh Scottish…