"Charles Stross & Cory Doctorow - Appeals Court" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Appeals Court
by Charles Stross &
Cory Doctorow

What finally wakes Huw is the pain in his bladder. His head is throbbing, but his bladder has gone weak
on him lately — if he doesn't get up and find the john soon he's going to piss himself, so he struggles up
from a sump-hole of somnolence.



He opens his eyes to find that he's lying face-down in a hammock. The hammock sways gently from side
to side in the hot stuffy air. Light streams across him in a warm flood from one side of the room; the floor
below the string mesh is gray and scuffed and something tells him he isn't on land any more. Shit, he
thinks, pushing stiffly against the edge and trying not to fall as the hammock slides treacherously out from
under him. Why am I so tired?



His bare feet touch the ground before he realises he's bare-ass naked. He shakes his head, yawning. His
veins feel as if all the blood has been replaced by something warm and syrupy and full of sleep. Drugs?
he think, blinking. The walls —



Three of them are bland, gray sheets of structural plastic with doors in them. The fourth is an
outward-leaning sheet of plexiglass or diamond or something. And a very, very long way below him he
can see wave-crests.



Huw gulps, his pulse speeding. Something strange is lodged in the back of his throat: he stifles a panicky
whistle. There in a corner is his battered kit-bag, and a heap of travel-worn clothing. He leans against the
wall. There's got to be a crapper somewhere nearby, hasn't there? The floor, now he's awake enough to
pay attention, is thrumming with a low bass chord from the engines and the waves are sloshing by
endlessly below. As he picks at a dirty shirt a battered copper teapot rolls away from beneath it.
"Shitfuckpissbugger," he swears, memories flooding back. Then he picks the teapot up and gives it a
resentful rub.



"Wotcher, mate!" The djinn that materializes above the teapot is a hologram, so horribly realistic that for
a moment Huw forgets his desperate need for a piss.



"Fuck you, too, Ade," he mumbles.
"What kind of way to welcome yer old mate is that, sunshine?" Hologram-Adrian's wearing bush jacket,
pith helmet and shorts, a shotgun slung over one shoulder. "How yer feeling, anyway?"