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

"-I'm not insulting!-"
"Shut up." Huw blows out a deep breath. "Unless you want me to give you a guided tour of the hotel waste compactor and heavy metal reclamation subsystem. From the inside."
"Ulp." The djinn shuts up.
"That's better. Now. Breakfast. I want, let's see … fried eggs. Bacon rashers. Pork sausages. Toast with butter on it, piles of butter. Don't argue, I've had a grey-market LDL anti-cholesterol hack. Oh yeah. Black pudding. Tell your little friends in the canteen to have it waiting for me. There is no 'or else' for you to grasp at, you horrible little robot, you're going to do this my way or you're not going to do very much at all, ever again."
Huw stands up and stretches. A plink with the pinky remote and his bicycle unlocks and stretches too, folding itself into shopping-mall mode. Memory metal frames are one of the few benefits of high technology, in Huw's opinion-along with the ability to eat seven different flavors of grease for breakfast and not die of a heart attack before lunchtime.
"Got that?"
"I told them, but they say these Turkish food processors, they don't like working with non-Halal-"
The djinn shuts up at Huw's snarl. Huw picks up the teapot, hangs it from his bike's handle-bars, and pedals off down the hotel corridor with blood in his eye.
I wonder what my chances are of getting a hanging judge?


· · · · ·


Huw pedals to the end of the hotel's drive and hangs a left, following the djinn's directions, rides two more blocks, turns right, and confronts a wall of humanity.
It's a good, old-fashioned throng. From his vantagepoint atop the saddle, it seems to writhe, a mass of variegated robes and business-attire, individuals lost in the teem. He studies it for a moment longer, and sees that for all its density it's moving rather quickly, though with little regard for personal space. He dismounts the bike and it extrudes its kickstand. Planting his hands on his hips, he belches up a haram gust of bacon-grease and ponders. He can always lock up the bike and proceed afoot, but nothing handy presents itself for locking. The djinn is manifesting a glowing countdown timer, ticking away the seconds before he will be late at court.
Just then, the crowd shits out a person, who makes a beeline for him.
"Hello, Adrian," Huw says, once the backpacker is within shouting distance-about sixty centimeters, given the din of footfalls and conversations. Huw is somehow unsurprised to see the backpacker again, clad in his travelwear and a rakish stubble, eyes red as a baboon's ass after a night's hashtaking.
"Well, fancy!" says Adrian. "Out for a bit of a ride?"
"No, actually," replies Huw. "On my way somewhere, and running late. Do you think I can ride around this crowd on another street?"
The backpacker snorts. "Sure, if you ride to Tunisia. That's not going to do you much good here, I'm afraid. And don't think about locking it up, mate, or it'll be nationalized by the Popular Low-Impact Transit Committee before you've gone three steps."
"Shit," grunts Huw. He gestures at the bike and it deflates and compacts itself into a carry-case. He hefts it-the fucking thing weighs a ton.
"Yup," Adrian agrees, cheerily. "Nice to have if you want to go on a tour of the ruins or get somewhere at three A.M.-not much good otherwise, though. Want to sell it to me? I met a pair of sisters last night who're going to take me off to the countryside for a couple days of indoctrination and heavy petting. I'd love to have some personal transport."
"Fuck," says Huw. He's had the bike for seven years; it's an old friend, jealously guarded. "How about I rent it to you?"
Adrian grins and produces a smokesaver from one of the many snap-pockets on his chest. A nugget of hash smolders inside the plastic tube, a barely visible coal in the thick smoke. He puts his mouth over the end and slurps down the smoke, holds it for a thoughtful moment, then expels it over Huw's head.
"Lovely. I'll return it in two days, three tops. Where're you staying?"
"The fucking Marriott."
"Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Here, will this be enough?" He hands Huw a foil-wrapped brick of Assassin-brand hash, the size of a paving-stone. "The sisters're into hashishim-revival. Quite versatile minds, they have."
Huw is already copping a light buzz from the sidestream Adrian's blowing his way. This much hash will likely put him in a three-day incontinence coma. But someone might want it, he supposes. "Tell you what," he says. "Let's call this a deposit. You can have it back for the safe return of the bike in four days at the Marriott, all right?"
Adrian works his head from side to side. "Sure, mate. Works for me. Shame you don't trust me to return the bike on my own, but that's how it is, I suppose."
"Okay. But you'd better bloody look after it. That bike has sentimental value, we've come a long way together." Huw whispers into the bike's handlebars and hands it to Adrian. It interfaces with his PAN, accepts him as its new erstwhile owner, and unfolds. Adrian saddles up, waves once, and pedals off for points rural and lecherous.
Huw holds the djinn's lamp up and hisses at it. "Right," he says. "Get me to the court on time."
"With the utmost of pleasures, sirrah," it begins. Huw gives it a sharp shake. "All right, then," it says. "Let me teach you to say, 'Out of my bloody way,' and we'll be off."


· · · · ·


Huw doesn't know quite what to expect from the Fifth People's Technology Court. A yurt? Sandstone? Horrible modernist-brutalist white-sheathed space-age pile?
As it turns out, it's an inflatable building, an outsized bounce-house made of metallic fabric and compressed air. The whole thing could be deflated and carted elsewhere on a flatbed truck in a morning, or simply attached to a dirigible and lifted to a new spot. A great safety-yellow rubbery gasket the size of a manhole cover sprouts from one side, hooked into power, bandwidth, sewage, and water, armored flex-hoses coursing with modcons.
It's shaped like a casino-owner's idea of the Parthenon, cartoonish columns and squishy frescoes depicting mankind's dominance over technology. Huw bounds up the rubbery steps and through the six-meter doors. A fourteen-year-old boy with a bad moustache confronts him as he passes into the lobby.
"Pizzpot," grunts the kid, hefting a curare-blower in Huw's direction. Huw skids to a stop on the yielding floor.
"Pardon?"
"Pizzpot," repeats the boy. He's wearing some kind of uniform, yellow semi-disposable coveralls tailored like a potato-sack and all abristle with insignia. It looks like the kind of thing that Biohazard Containment passes out when they quarantine a borough because it's dissolving into brightly colored machine parts.
"The People's Revolutionary Technology Court Guardsman wishes to see your passport, sirrah," his djinn explains. "Court will be in session in fifteen seconds."
Huw rolls up his sleeve and pressed his forearm against the grimy passport reader the Guardsman has pulled from his waistband. "Gaah. Show me the way." A faint glowing trail appears in front of Huw, snaking down the hall and up to a battered-looking door.
Huw stumbles up to the door and leans on it. It opens easily, sucking him through with a gust of dusty air, and he staggers into a brightly lit green room with a row of benches stretching round three walls. The center of the room is dominated by two boxes; a strangely menacing black cube a meter on a side, and a lectern, behind which hunches a somewhat moth-eaten vulture in a black robe.
Faces turn to watch Huw as he stumbles to a halt. "You're late," squawks the vulture-on second thoughts, Huw realizes she's not an uplifted avian, but a human being, wizened and twisted by age, her face dominated by a great hatchet of a nose.
"Terribly sorry," Huw pants apologetically. "Won't happen again."
"Better not." The judge harrumphed consumptively. "Dammit, I deserve some respect! Horrible children."