"Wil McCarthy - Boundary Condition" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCarty Sarah)

"Okay, so what's the 'O'?"

Tomo waved the question away. "Unimportant. Means 'elegant.' You stick that on a lot of words. Shiri
means 'ass,' right? 'Oshiri' means derriere. Much nicer."

With that, Tomo tossed the rice ball to Jiminy, who'd had six long months in zero-g and caught it easily.
He eyed it uneasily, though. Where was the gag?

"You like?" said Tomo. "Go ahead, eat it. Exercise your free will."

Hmm. Jiminy could feel the ghost of a punchline out there somewhere, but he didn't have enough
information yet. He was going to get zinged. Again.

"Please tell me this has nothing to do with your ass."

Tomo laughed. "Not this time. But you eat that thing, it means you owe me a debt. The word for that is
giri, and if you take that off you're left with oni, which means 'goblin.' Oni giri, the debt owed to a
goblin."

Jiminy made sure Tomo could see him rolling his eyes. "They call you the Weather Wit? Really?"

"Ah," said Tomo, waving that away, too. "You spoiled my rhythm. You know how you say 'Jim knows a
little Japanese?' Jim wa nihongo hanashimasu."

As Tomo said this, he turned in mid-air and touched his finger to Jiminy's nose at the word "knows," and
again at 'hana,' which was the Japanese word for nose. A double-entendre? A triple? A bilingual triple
entendre?

"Hmm," he said, thinking that one over. Clever was not quite the same thing as funny.

They passed through the final hatchway — about as wide as a standard doorway back home — and into
the station core. It wasn't much; just a bus-sized fiberglass habitat module — the Hab — serviced by a
spiderweb of rollout carbon trusses and inflatable Kevlar tube tents. Dewey Park covered as much
footprint as an aircraft carrier, but inside it had the volume of a midsize submarine, and only weighed as
much as a Lear Jet.

If the two NASA stations were Cadillacs — classy, rugged, and safe as houses — then the three NWS
ones were more along the lines of an Indian Tata. That is to say: flimsy, maintenance-hungry, and cheaper
than their own weight in gasoline. If Jim really wanted to, he could puncture the Hab wall with a ballpoint
pen. But hey, that was life in the Service. With a big job and a small budget, they simply couldn't afford
to be too cautious.

"You want to hear an actual joke?" he asked Tomo. "I'll tell you a joke. You know the Pope?"

"Personally? Okay, okay, yes, I know who he is. You just got a new one, right?"

"The Catholics got him, yeah. Not me personally. Anyway, he was just crowned: Dave the First, the
American pope. And he's supposed to go to New York City to catch a plane to Rome, so they pack him
in this bulletproof Popemobile, and he's surrounded by bodyguards. One of them's driving, two are in the
back seat, one's on the roof ... And it suddenly dawns on old Dave that these guys will be on him like