"Charles Stross - Duat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

"Just a, a moment --" she began.

" DER FUEHRER!" shrieked the thing in the doorway. "Wants to see you," it added
conversationally.

Oshi blinked. Some kind of living terror weapon, every instinctive fear of insect/reptile/
predator rolled into one bad dream ... "I'm coming," she said. She forced herself to uncurl
and reach out across the bed for the robe she'd worn last night; it took more self-control

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2: In the Duat

than she'd imagined. The edgy, jittery terror of being unarmed and of having a gun pointed
at her -- she was used to that. But those biting jaws, those clutching fingers ... I'm still
alive, she told herself. So there must be a reason . ..

The Squaddie backed up into what was left of the doorway while she clothed herself. It
gripped the smoking support posts with two pairs of scaly hands, pointing the cannon at
her with a third pair. The black bundle of gun barrels tracked her of its own accord, tiny
red eyes swivelling voyeuristically across her body. Oshi shuddered, wiped a hand across
her brow. Her pulse pounded in her ears, her skin was slick -- behind the Squaddie,
everything was dark. " Ayatollah see you!" it cawed, backing into the alley. "Hss-ss-s ..."

Smoke and darkness, mist and night. Oshi edged forwards. Trembling -- hungry --
muscles not responding properly although she was in far better control of her body this
morning -- she looked round. "I can't see," she complained, blinking her vision to IR in
time to see the Goon Squad arrayed along the alley in all their gory splendour.

The sight was too much. Oshi backed up hard. A tentacle lashed forward, whipped around
her ankles; another caught her around the shoulders, pinioning her. Pressure blurred
everything for an instant, then she felt the touch of many hands ... "You go to see Anubis,"
it gibbered in her ear as she was rotated, feet over head, smelled something hideously
familiar from the scaly hide that rippled and stretched against her. She fought back against
a hot urge to vomit; if they were going to kill me they didn't need to put on this show ...
there was a jolt, then a bump that rippled through her spine. Then they were moving.
Going to see the dog-headed god.

There followed a jouncing ride through acrid-smelling darkness, clutched too tight to
breathe in the scaly tentacles/claws/fingers of a living weapon with bad breath. Her neck
felt far too light -- my head, where's my head? -- Oshi deliberately caught her tongue
between two molars. The pain worked; subtly modified neural paths cut in, shifting her
senses into three-dimensional acuity until she could identify each individual light receptor
in her eyes, could taste through her fingertips the scaly hide of the Goon bearing her
through the winding alleys of the town. She sensed the other Squaddies behind and in
front, blocky guns angled to cover the sealed entrances of buildings occupied or
otherwise. The Goons were living weapons built for fighting in built-up areas -- not very
intelligent, certainly not as efficient as cyberweapons, but loyal and dependable and
viciously fast.

Oshi forced herself to relax, remembered a calming mantra, willed herself into control of