"Нейл Стефенсон. Snow Crash (Снежная лавина, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

handles more upscale contracts, supposedly has a bigger espionage arm-though
if that's what people want, they just talk to an account rep at the Central
Intelligence Corporation.
And then there's The Enforcers-but they cost a lot and don't take well
to supervision. It is rumored that, under their uniforms, they wear T-shirts
bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick,
emblazoned with the words SUE
ME.
So Y.T. is coasting down a gradual slope toward the heavy iron gate of
White Columns, waiting for it to roll aside, waiting, waiting-but the gate
does not seem to be opening. No laser pulse has shot out of the guard shack
to find out who Y.T. is. The system has been overridden. If Y.T. was a
stupid ped she would go up to the MetaCop and ask him why. The MetaCop would
say, "The security of the city-state," and nothing more. These Burbclavesf
These city-statesl So small, so insecure, that just about everything, like
not mowing your lawn, or playing your stereo too loud, becomes a national
security issue.
No way to skate around the fence; White Columns has eight. foot iron,
robo-wrought, all the way around. She rolls up to the gate, grabs the bars,
rattles it, but it's too big and solid to rattle.
MetaCops aren't allowed to lean against their Unit-makes them look lazy
and weak. They can almost lean, look like they're leaning, they can even
brandish a big leaning-against-the-car 'tisde like this particular
individual, but they can't lean. Besides, with the complete, glinting
majesty of their Personal Portable
NEAL STEPHENSON
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Equipment Suite hanging on their Personal Modular Equipment Harness,
they would scratch the finish of the Unit.
"Jack this barrier to commerce, man, I got deliveries to make," Y.T.
announces to the MetaCop.
A wet, smacking burst, not loud enough to be an explosion, sounds from
the back of the Mobile Unit. It is the soft thup of a thick wrestler's
loogie being propelled through a rolled-up tongue. It is the distant,
muffled splurt of a baby having a big one. Y.T.'s hand, still gripping the
bars of the gate, stings for a mo~ ment, then feels cold and hot at the same
time. She can barely move it. She smells vinyl.
The MetaCop's partner climbs out of the back seat of the Mobile Unit.
The window of the back door is open, but everything on the Mobile Unit is so
black and shiny you can't tell that until the door moves. Both MetaCops,
under their glossy black helmets and night-vision goggles, are grinning. The
one getting out of the Mobile Unit is carrying a Short-Range Chemical
Restraint Projector-a loogie gun. Their little plan has worked. Y.T. didn't
think to aim her Knight Visions into the back seat to check for a goo-firing
sniper.
The loogie, when expanded into the air like this, is about the size of
a football. Miles and milcs of eensy but strong fibers, like spaghetti. The
sauce on the spaghetti is sticky, goopy stuff that Stays fluid for an
instant, when the loogie gun is fired, then sets quickly.
MetaCops have to tote this kind of gear because when each franchulate