"Ken MacLeod - Who" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

me. I hurled a shoe at each of them, hitting both animals right on their geneti-cally modified noses. The
dogs skidded to a halt, yelping and howling. A few meters away was a jewelry booth. I sprinted for it,
vaulted the counter, grabbed a recycler, and bashed at the display cabinet. An alarm brayed and the
security mesh rattled down behind me. The dogs, recovered and furi-ous, hurled themselves against it.
The rest of the pack pelted into view and joined them. Paws, jaws, barking, you get the picture.

“Put your hands up,” said a voice above the din.

I turned and looked into the bell-shaped muzzle of a Norton held in the hands of a sweet-looking lass
wearing a sample of the stall’s stock. I raised my hands, wishing I could put them somewhere else. In
those days, I had some vestige of modesty.

“I’m human,” I said. “That can’t hurt me.”

She allowed herself the smallest flicker of a glance at the EMP weapon’s sighting screen.

“It could give you quite a headache,” she said.

“It could that,” I admitted, my bluff called. I’d been half hoping she wouldn’t know how to interpret the
readouts.

“Security’s on its way,” she said.

“Good,” I said. “Better them than the dogs.”

She gave me a tight smile. “Trouble with the Tycoon?”

“Yes,” I said. “How did you guess?”

“Only the owner of the Station could afford dogs,” she said. “Besides…” She blinked twice slowly.

“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “Or serving girls.”

The stallkeeper laughed in my face. “All this for a servant? Wasn’t it Her Ladyship’s bedroom window
you jumped out of?”

I shuddered. “You flatter me,” I said. “Anyway, how do you know about—?”

She blinked again. “It’s on the gossip channels already.” I was about to give a heated explanation of why
that time-wasting rub-bish wasn’t among the enhancements inside my skull, thank you very much, when
the goons turned up, sent the dogs skulking reluctantly away, and took me in. They had the tape across
my mouth before I had a chance to ask the stallkeeper her name, let alone her number. Not, as it turned
out, that I could have done much with it even if I had. But it would have been polite.

****

The charge was attempting to willfully evade the civil penalties for adultery. I was outraged.

“Bastards!” I shouted, screwing up the indictment and dashing it to the floor of my cell. “I thought
polygamy was illegal!”