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

nothing. His voice was whispery, calm, yet still authoritative. Sarah thought it could be a
computer voice, so devoid was it of highlights. "Our Sarah has style, Firebud," he said. "Style
and discipline. You are to give it form, to fashion it. Her style must be a weapon, a shaped
charge. You will make it, I will point it. And Sarah will punch a hole right where we intend she
should." He looked at Sarah with his steady brown eyes. "Won't you, Sarah?" he asked.
Sarah did not reply. Instead, she looked up at the body designer, drawing back her lips,
showing teeth. "Let me hunt you some night, Firebud," she said. "I'll show you style."
The designer rolled her eyes. "Dirtgirl stuff," she snorted, but she took a step back.
Sarah grinned.
"And, Firebud," Cunningham said, "leave the scars alone. They will speak to our Princess.
Of this cruel terrestrial reality that she helped create. That she dominates. With which she is
already half in love.
"Yes," he said, "leave the scars alone." For the first time he smiled, a brief tightening
of the cheek muscles, cold as liquid nitrogen. "Our Princess will love the scars," he said. "Love
them till the very last."

WINNERS/YES LOSERS/YES

The Aujourd'Oui is a jockey bar, and they are all here, moonjocks and rigjocks, holdjocks
and powerjocks and rockjocks-the jocks condescending to share the floor with the mudboys and
dirtgirls who surround them, those who hope to become them or love them or want simply to be near
them, to touch them in the zonedance and absorb a piece of their radiance. The jocks wear their
colors, vests, and jackets bearing the emblems of their blocs-TRW, Pfizer, Toshiba, Tupolev,
ARAMCO-the blazons of the Rock War-
victors borne with careless pride by the jocks who had won them their place in the sky. Six feet
three inches in height, Sarah stalks among them in a black satin jacket, blazoned on its back with
a white crane that rises to the starry firmament amid a flock of chrome-bright Chinese characters.
It is the badge of a small bloc that does most of its business out of Singapore, and is hardly


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ever seen here in the Florida Free Zone. Her face is unknown to the regulars, but it is hoped they
won't think it odd, not as odd as it would seem if she wore the badge of Tupolev or Kikuyu Optics
I.G.
Her sculpted face is pale, the Florida tan gone, her eyes black-rimmed. Her almost-black
hair is short on the sides and brushy on top, her nape hair falling in two thin braids down her
back. Chrome-steel earrings brush her shoulders. Firebud has broadened her already-broad shoulders
and pared down the width of her pelvis; her face is sharp and pointed beneath a widow's peak,
looking like a succession of arrowheads, the shaped charge that Cunningham demands. She wears
black dancing slippers laced over the ankles and dark purple stretch overalls with suspenders that
frame her breasts, stretching the fabric over the nipples that Firebud has made more prominent.
Her shirt is gauze spangled with silver; her neck scarf, black silk. There is a two-way spliced
into her auditory nerve and a receiver tagged to the optic centers of her forebrain, at the moment
monitoring police broadcasts, a constant Times Square of an LED running amber, at will, above her
expanded vision.
Gifts from Cunningham. Her hardwired nerves are her own. So is Weasel.

I LOVE MY KIKUYU EYES, SEZ PRIMO PORNOSTAR ROD MCLEISH, AND WITH THE INFRARED OPTION, I CAN TELL