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

A Nipponese robot arm shoves the pizza out and into the top slot. The
hatch folds shut to protect it.
As the Deiverator is pulling out of the chute, building up speed,
checking the address that is flashed across his windshield, deciding whether
to turn right or left, it happens. His stereo cuts out again-on command of
the onboard system. The cockpit lights gored. Red~ A repetitive buzzer
begins to sound. The LED readout on his windshield, which echoes the one on
the pizza box, flashes up: 20:00.
They have just given the Deliverator a twenty-minute-old pizza. He
checks the address; it is twelve miles away.
2
The Deliverator lets out an involuntary roar and puts the hammer down.
His emotions tell him to go back and kill that manager, get his swords out
of the trunk, dive in through the little sliding window like a ninja, track
him down through the moiling chaos of the microwaved franchise and confront
him in a climactic thick-crust apocalypse. But he thinks the same thing when
someone cuts him off on the freeway, and he's never done it-yet.
He can handle this. This is doable. He cranks up the orange warning
lights to maximum brilliance, puts his headlights on autoflash. He overrides
the warning buzzer, jams the stereo over to Taxiscan, which cruises all the
taxi-driver frequencies listening for interesting traffic. Can't understand
a flicking word. You could buy tapes, learn-while-you-drive, and learn to
speak Taxilinga. It was essential, to get a job in that business. They said
it was based on English but not one word in a hundred was recognizable.
Still, you could get an idea. If there was trouble on this road, they'd be
babbling about it in Taxilinga, give him some warning, let him take an
alternate route so he wouldn't get
he grips the wheel
stuck in tTdffiC

his eyes get big, he can feel the pressure driving them back into his
skull
or caught behind a mobile home
his bladder is very full and deliver the pizza
Oh, Cod oh, God
late
22:06 hangs on the windshield, all he can see, all he can think about
is 30:01.
The taxi drivers are buzzing about something. Taxilinga is mellifluous
babble with a few harsh foreign sounds, like butter spiced with broken
glass. He keeps hearing "fare." They are always iabbering about their
fucking fares. Big deal. What hap-pens if you deliver your fare
SNOW CRASH
12
late
you don't get as much of a tip? Big deal.
Big slowdown at the intersection of CSV-5 and Oahu Road, per usual,
only way to avoid it is to cut through The Mews at Windsor Heights.
TMAWFIs all have the same layout. When creating a new Burbclave, TMAWH
Development Corporation will chop down any mountain ranges and divert the