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

“—so then Malcolm sold his flat in the New Town and bought—“

Sudden pause. They looked at us, and then they looked down their
noses. On the bridge of each of these noses was a black squiggle, like the
bottom half of a glasses frame. The latest gadget from Carbon Glen. It
seemed our faces weren’t online anywhere as bad guys, because the
incomers all looked up and blinked and went on talking.

“—an international civil servant with the World Trade Organization, and
she’s very worried—“

This checking us out stuff was as much of an insult as what the
trucker had said. One look at their faces told me they’d had the Reverse
treatment. It’s supposed to turn back the clock, but it doesn’t. Not quite.
Smooths out the skin and tightens up the muscles. Helps the bones and
joints too, I’m told. But it never wipes away all the signs of age. It’s illegal in
Scotland, because it does things to your genes. There’s laws against GM
crops, for crying out loud. GM people are an even bigger no-no. But what
few cops there are in the Highlands are too busy—or have too much
sense—to hunt down Frankenfolk. Place is crawling with them.

The woman behind the counter, a broad-in-the-beam local who for
sure had not had the Reverse treatment, was still tonging strips of bacon
into rolls so fresh I could smell them when I noticed the fifth incomer
checking us out.
 This lassie was a crustie. Her black hair was in matted braids. Her
face was not bad and had been washed in the last day or two. Over the
back of her chair was a hide jacket. She wore a shapeless woolen sweater.
Long legs in some kind of tweedy tartan trousers. Feet in buckle-sided
boots propped on a plastic chair. She was sitting at a small table by herself,
over by the window around the side of the counter. She had a white teapot
and a cup of green tea in front of her. Beside them on the table was a
scatter of pages printed off from the day’s papers.

She looked us up and down in a lazy way and then looked back at her
papers. When we sat down at the empty table beside her she paid us no
attention. She did swing her legs off the chair and lean forward over the
offprints. I could smell her. It wasn’t a stink. Sweat and wool and something
like the sea.

Finished the bacon roll and on to my second coffee. I was fiddling
with the cross-bolt, turning it over my fingers. We were talking about the
day’s job when I felt a stare on my neck. I turned and saw the lassie looking
hard at me, then down at my hands. No, she was looking at the thing in my
hands. Then she looked away. She shrugged into her big jacket, picked up
a bulging carrier bag, stood up and walked out.

****