"Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow - Jury Service" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Safe cycling is one of the modern conveniences that irritate him most. Also: polite youngsters with plastic smiles; cops who think like social
workers; and geeks who think they understand technology. Geeks, the old aristocracy. He'll show them, one of these days. Huw wobbles along
the side of the main road and pulls in beside the door of the Libyan consulate.
"Mister Rogers? I am pleased to meet you." The young man behind the desk has a plastic smile and is far too polite for Huw's taste: Huw grunts
assent and sits down in the indicated seat. "Your application has been forwarded to us and, ah? If you would be pleased to travel to our
beautiful country, I can assure you of just one week's jury service."
Huw nods again.
The polite man fidgets with the air of someone trying to come up with an inoffensive way of saying something potentially rather rude. "I'm
pleased to inform you that our young land is quite tolerant of other culture's customs. I can assure you that whatever ISO-standard containment
suit you choose to bring with you will be respected by our people."
Huw shakes his head. "What huh?"
"Your, that is, your—" The smiler leans across his desk and points at Huw's trefoil-marked forehead. The finger he points with meets resistance.
A plastic sheet has hermetically sealed Huw's side of the room off from the rest of the consulate. It is so fantastically transparent that Huw hasn't
even noticed it until the smiler's finger puckered a singularity in its vertical run, causing it to scatter light at funny angles and funhouse distort the
solid and sensible wood-paneled walls behind the desk.
"Ah," Huw says. "Ah. No, you see, it's a joke of some sort. Not an official warning."
"I'm very glad to hear it, Mister Rogers! You will, of course, have documents attesting to that before you clear our immigration?"
"Right," Huw says. "Of course." Fucking Sandra. Whether or not she is directly responsible for the tat is beside the point. It happened on her
prem, therefore she is culpable. Dammit. He has errands to run before he catches the flight—attracting the attention of the gene police is not on
his agenda.
"Then we will see you soon." The smiler reaches into a desk drawer and pulls out a small tarnished metal teapot which he shoves
experimentally at the barrier. It puckers around it and suddenly the teapot is sitting on Huw's side of the desk, wearing an iridescent soap-bubble
of pinched-off containment. "Peace be with you."
"And you," says Huw, rising. The interview is obviously at an end. He picks up the teapot and follows the blinkenlights to the exit from the
consulate, studiously avoiding the blurred patches of air where other visitors are screened from one another by the utility fog. "What now?" he
asks the teapot.
"Blrrrt. Greetings, tech-juror Rogers. I am a guidance iffrit from the People's Magical Libyan Jamahiriya. Show me to representatives of the
People's Revolutionary Command Councils and I am required to intercede for you. Polish me and I will install translation leeches in your Broca's
area, then assist you in memorizing the Qur'an and hadiths. Release me and I will grant your deepest wish."
"Um, I don't think so." Huw scratches his head. Fucking Sandra, he thinks again, then he packs the pot into his pannier and pedals heavily away
towards the quaint industrial-age pottery where he oversees the antique solid-volume renderers, applies the finishing human touches, and packs
the finished articles for shipment. It's going to be a long working day—almost five hours—before he can get around to trying to sort this mess
out, but at least the wet squishy sensation of clay under his fingernails will help calm the roiling indignation he feels at his violation by a random
GM party prankster.

·····

Two days later, Huw's waiting with his bicycle and a large backpack on a soccer field in a valley outside Monmouth. It has rained overnight, and
the field is muddy. A couple of large crows sit on the rusting goal-post, regarding him curiously. There are one or two other people slouching
around the departure area dispiritedly. Airports just haven't been the same since the end of the jet age.
Huw tries to scratch the side of his nose, irritably. Fucking Sandra, he thinks again as he pokes at the opaque spidergoat silk of his biohazard
burka. He'd gone round to remonstrate with her after work the other day, only to find that her house had turned into a size two thousand
Timberland hiking boot and the homeowner herself had decided to winter in Fukuyama this year. A net search would probably find her but he
wasn't prepared to expose himself to any more viruses this week. One was quite enough—especially after he discovered that the matching
trefoil brand on his shoulder glowed in the dark.
A low rumble rattles the goal post and disturbs the crows as a cloud-shadow slides across the pitch. Huw looks up, and up, and up—his eyes
can't quite take in what he's seeing. That's got to be more than a kilometer long! he realizes. The engine note rises as the huge catamaran
airship jinks and wobbles sideways towards the far end of the pitch and engages its station-keeping motors, then begins to unreel an elevator
car the size of a shipping container.
"Attention, passengers now waiting for flight FL-052 to North Africa and stations in the Middle East, please prepare for boarding. This means