"Carter, Raphael - The Fortunate Fall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Carter Raphael)

(Centipede)

(I did leave two chips in my head; one was a dream coprocessor. Whatever you've heard, dreams don't reveal your hidden desires-- if they did, I'd never be allowed to dream. They don't reveal solutions to your problems, and they don't foretell the future. They're just the fumes your brain exhales as it digests the day's new memories and mulches them into the old. A dream coprocessor increases the efficiency of that process, improving memory. Which is a good thing on the whole, although from time to time I wish there were a button for "forget." One that I controlled, I mean. The dreams you get with a coprocessor are bloody, vivid, and obscure, like second-rate German Expressionism.
On the bullet train to Leningrad I briefly slept, and dreamed she stood before me, holding something in her hand: a centipede. She held it out to me. I must have refused, for she drew it back, laughing. And then I saw that she was wearing a cloak with two hoods, one lying empty on her shoulder. But no, it was not empty. Her second head lifted itself slowly, and its eyes were flashing incandescent bulbs in metal sockets.
I woke with the tunnel lights reddening the inside of my eyelids, dark and bright, flashing, flashing.)




Three

A FASTER CABLE

I had expected that she would be waiting for me, but she wasn't. I walked out of the gate into the trainport, past a shop full of T-shirts, snow domes, and cheap telepresence tapes of the city's attractions; past a kiosk of black moist-novels and garish blue and yellow drydisk magazines; then into the trainport bar, which was, I thought, entirely brighter than it should have been. When I gave the bartender my order, he looked at me with alarm. "Vodka and what?"
"Compost. Vodka and compost. You haven't been here long, have you?"
"No, ma'am," he said sheepishly. "The servo's broken. I'm sort of an emergency replacement."
"There's a lot of that going around. Let me guess. You probably have ten years' experience too. You're a virtual ghost the same age as Prime Minister Yablokov."
"Excuse me, tavarishcha?"
"Comrade," no less. This one was as young as he looked. "All right, look. Compost. Noun. A mixture of micronutrients for the nourishment of aging nanobugs. Named for the taste--"
"Oh, you mean NanoSweet?"
"That's what the manufacturer is pleased to call it, yes."
The bartender chuckled. "I'll just need to see your readout, tavarishcha." Oh, goodie, I'd made a friend.
I touched the telltale to the back of my neck, and showed it to him when it chimed. The number was higher this time; Mirabara must have fried quite a few bugs remodeling the rental car. That was fine with me. At least the drink would taste like alcohol, even if it didn't feel like it.
Ten minutes later I'd drunk the last vile drop, and still no sign of Mirabara. I gave her another five minutes while I drank a cup of coffee, then got up to leave, resolving to fill out a repartnering form before I went to bed. I was almost out the door when a bell chimed softly and a speaker above the bar singsonged: "M. T. Andreyeva, hearth News One, clan Camera, insert a white courtesy plug please. Maya at News One of Camera, white courtesy plug."
I found the rack of plugs conveniently located right where people had to stand to look up at the arrivals screen. You'd think a trainport would be quiet at two in the morning, but, this being Leningrad, there was a crowd. By the time I got through to the phone I'd used three different obscenities a total of seven times, made at least two lifelong enemies, and possibly broken one toe-- not mine, someone else's. Served them right for using the monitor when they could get the same data faster from the Net.
When I looked at the plug I felt a wave of nausea. The cable was crusted with reddish-brown spots--catsup was the least disgusting theory--and the plug itself was greasy with someone's hair oil. I didn't relish the thought of having it a centimeter from my brain. Why do they always give you an audio plug, anyway? A microphone and speaker would be just as good and far more sanitary. Kickbacks from the manufacturer? There was a story in there somewhere.
I looked wistfully through the press of bodies at the snow dome store, where I might beg a disinfectant. But that would mean fighting my way out again through sweat, perfume, body heat, and gutter exclamations. Besides, they probably wouldn't have it. I settled for wiping the plug on my shirt, to replace some of the unknown dirt with dirt I was on intimate terms with, and slid the disgusting thing into my minisocket. Then I remembered that the minisocket was sitting right on top of Wernicke's area, so if the plug infected my brain with something, the first thing I'd lose would be the ability to understand speech. Oh well, I thought jauntily, it's too late now; and besides, how often do people say anything worth listening to, these days? You could almost get along without that skill.
In this cheerful state of mind I thought out into the cable and said: "This had better be good."
The answer was terse and delivered at a volume just this side of a shout: "Slot up for God's sake, agoraphobe." Click. It was Keishi.
Sighing, I made my way back through the crowd, less rudely and therefore more slowly than before. I settled back down at the bar, took out my Net chip, and put it on the counter in front of me.
"Would you like something else, tavarishcha?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," I said, leaning forward. "I would like to get well and truly drunk. I know it's probably against company policy, but you wouldn't tell on me, would you?"
He shuffled his feet uneasily. "Drinking beyond your ration can be very dangerous--especially--" He broke off.
"Especially at my age. So you know that, do you. You know, you remind me of a car I met once. Look, overfeeding them just this one time won't kill me. Even if they have evolved out of their bug birth control program, they can only reproduce so fast."
He gave me a pained look. "I'm sorry, tavarishcha. We're not allowed."
"Oh, all right then. If you can't, you can't." I started to turn away, then looked back at him appraisingly and said: "Of all the seedy two-bit brains in all the Historical Nations in the world, she patches into mine."
He searched my face, puzzled. Then he smiled the smile of someone finally making out the elephant in a child's drawing. "Oh, is that supposed to be Bogart, ma'am?"
Just as I'd suspected. I ordered coffee to make him go away, then picked up the chip from the counter and slotted it in.
"Behind you," she said.
I turned around on the stool. "Fashion risk, Mirabara?" Keishi was wearing a Leningrad University T-shirt that must have been twenty years old, and at most had been washed once in all that time; white slacks stained gray and rolled up at least six inches; wisps of greasy hair escaping from a broad-brimmed hat. She looked like a hard-core wirehead, the kind you see trying to kiss the horse on Nevsky Prospect.
"I saw the way you looked at my earrings last time. I thought I'd try a different effect."
"Maybe something a little less radical," I said.
She shrugged and morphed back into the clothing of the day before. "It's just a virtual image. Actually, this is what my body's wearing today in real."
"Then what was it wearing yesterday?"
"Nothing."
"All right, if you don't want to tell me...Ф
"I just did," she said, raising her eyebrows.
This reminded me that my body was sitting in a trainport bar carrying on a conversation with thin air. I glanced warily at the bartender. He returned the look without surprise and said, "More coffee, ma'am?"
"No, I'm all right," I said. He seemed blasщ enough about it.
"Anything for your friend?"