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

technology jury. Can you direct me to the public transport terminus?"
"I wouldn't bother if I were you," someone says from behind him, making Huw jump so high he almost punches a hole in the yellowing ceiling
tiles. "She's moonlighting, driving a Thai investment bank's security bots on the evening shift. See the bandwidth?"
"Um, no, as a matter of fact I don't," Huw says defensively. "I stick to the visible spectrum."
The interloper is probably female and from somewhere in northern Europe, judging by the way she's smeared zinc ointment across her entire
observable epidermis. Chilly fog spills from her cuffs at wrist and ankle and there's the whine of a peltier cooler pushed to the limit coming from
her bum-bag. About all Huw can see of her is her eyes and an electric blue ponytail erupting from the back of her anti-melanoma hood.
"Isn't it a bit rude to snoop on someone else's dreams?" he adds.
"Not really." The interloper shrugs, then grins alarmingly at him. "It's what I do for a living." She offers him a hand, and before he can stop
himself he's shaking it politely. "I'm Björk. Doctor Björk."
"Björk, uh—"
"I know what you're going to say, named after the early twenty-first century bard, yes. I specialize in musical dream therapy. And I'm here on a
tech jury gig, too. Perhaps we'll get a chance to work on the same case?"
At that moment the Revolutionary Airport Command and Cleaning Council coughs, spasms painfully, sits up, and looks around querulously. I'm
not working! Honest! She exclaims through the medium of Huw's teapot translator. Then, getting a grip: "Oh, you're tourists. Can I help you?"
Her manner is so abrupt and rude that Huw feels right at home. "Yes, yes," he declares impatiently. "We're jurors and we need to get to a hotel.
Where's the light rail terminal or bus stand?"
"Are no busses. Today is Friday, can't you read?"
"Friday—" Huw does a double-take.
"Yes, but how are we to our hotel to ride?" asks Doctor Björk, sounding puzzled.
"Why don't you walk?" the Council asks with gloomy satisfaction. "Haven't you got legs? Didn't Allah, the merciful, bless you with a full
complement of homeobox genes?"
"But it's—" Huw consults his wrist-map and does a double-take—"twelve kilometers! And it's forty-three degrees in the shade!"
"It's Friday," the old woman repeats placidly. "Nothing works on Fridays. It's in the Qur'an."
"So why are you working for a Burmese banking cartel as a security bot supervisor?" Björk asks sharply.
"That's—!" the Council glares at her. "That's none of your business!"
"Burma isn't an Islamic country," Huw muses aloud, seeing which direction Björk is heading in. Maybe she's not a fucknozzle after all, he thinks
to himself, although he has his doubts about anyone who has anything to do with dream therapy, much less musical dream therapy. (Unless
she's only in it for purely practical reasons, such as money.) "Do you suppose they might be dealing with their demographic deficit by importing
out-of-timezone gastarbeiters from Islamic countries who want to work on the day of rest?"
"What an astonishing thought!" echoes Björk. "That must be illegal, mustn't it?"
"Stop! Stop!" The Revolutionary Airport Command and Cleaning Council puts her hands up in the air. "I have a nephew, he has a car! Perhaps
he can give you a ride on his way to mosque? I'm sure he must be going there in only half an hour, and I'm sure your hotel will turn out to be on
his way."
The car, when it arrives, is a gigantic early twenty-first century Mercedes diesel, with tinted windows and air conditioning and plastic seats that
have cracked and split in the dry desert heat. A brilliantly detailed green-and-silver miniature mosque conceals a packet of tissues on the rear
parcel shelf and the dash is plastered with green and gold stickers bearing edifying quotations from the hadiths. The Council's nephew looks too
young to bear the weight of his huge black moustache, let alone to be driving this Teutonic behemoth, but at least he's awake and moving in the
noonday furnace-heat.
"Hotel Marriott," Björk says. "Vite-schnell-pronto! ¡Hale, hale!"
The Mercedes crawls along the highway like a dung beetle on the lowest step of a pyramid. As they head towards the outskirts of the mostly-
closed city of Tripoli Huw feels the gigantic and oppressive weight of advertising bearing down on his proxy filters. When Libya got serious about
consumerism in the second decade of millennium three, they went overboard on superficial glitz and cheezy sloganizing. The deluge of
CoolTown webfitti they're driving through alternates between insanely dense technobabble and a bizarrely arabized version of discreet Victorian
trader's notices, with just a seasoning of old-time anti-western paranoia. Once they drive under the threshold of the gigantic tinted geodesic
dome that hovers above the city, lifted on its own column of hot air, it finally gets through to Huw: he's not in Monmouth any more, or even
Bradford.
The Council's nephew narrates a shouted, heavily accented travelogue as they hoot and lurch through the traffic, but most of it is lost in the roar
of the air-conditioner and the whine of the differential. What little Huw can make out seems to be pitches for local businesses—cafes, hash-bars,
amusement parlors. Doctor Björk and Huw sit awkwardly at opposite sides of the Merc's rear bench, conversation an impossibility at the current