"Walter Jon Williams - Hardwired" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

a jock. The eyes that could focus into the night blackness, straining to spot the infrared
signature of the laws riding combat air patrol over the prairie, were now shut in a small armored
cabin, all the visuals coming in through remotes. He is still the best, still delivering the mail.
He shifts in his seat. The country swing fades and all Cowboy can hear in the echoing
silence is the whirr of Warren's lathe. And sense the restlessness in himself, wanting only-a
name...


Chapter Two

TODAY/YES


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Bodies and parts of bodies flare and die in laserlight, here the translucent sheen of eyes
rimmed in kohl or turned up to a heaven masked by the starry-glitter ceiling, here electric hair
flaring with fashionable static discharges, here a blue-white glow of teeth rimmed in darkglow
fire and pierced by mute extended tongue. It is zonedance. Though the band is loud and sweat-hot,
many of the zoned are tuned to their own music through crystal wired delicately to the auditory
nerves, or dancing to the headsets through which they can pick up any of the bar's twelve
channels... They seethe in arrhythmic patterns, heedless of one another. Perfect control is
sought, but there are accidents-impacts, a flurry of fists and elbows-and someone crawls out of
the zone, whimpering through a bloodstreaked hand, unnoticed by the pack.
To Sarah the dancers at the Aujourd'Oui seem a twitching mass of dying flesh, bloody,
insensate, mortal. Bound by the mud of earth. They are meat. She is hunting, and Weasel is the
name of her friend.

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The body designer had eyes of glittering violet above cheekbones of sculptured ivory. Her
hair was a streaky blond that swept to an architecturally perfect dorsal fin behind her nape. Her
muscles were catlike and her mouth was a cruel flower.
"Hair shorter, yes," she said. "One doesn't wear it long in freefall. " Her fingers lashed
out and seized Sarah by the chin, tilting her head to the cold north light. Her fingernails were
violet, to match her eyes, and sharp. Sarah glared at her, sullen. The body designer smiled. "A
little pad in the chin, yes," she says. "You need a stronger chin. The tip of the nose can be
altered; you're a bit too retrousse. The curve of the jawbone needs a little flattening-I'll bring
my paring knife tomorrow. And, of course, we'll remove the scars. Those scars have got to go."
Sarah curled her lip under the pressure of the violet-tipped fingers.
The designer dropped Sarah's chin and whirled. "Must we use this girl, Cunningham?" she
asked. "She has no style at all. She can't walk gracefully. Her body's too big, too awkward. She's
nothing. She's dirt. Common."
Cunningham sat silently in his brown suit, his neutral, unmemorable face giving away