"Paul Di Filippo & Bruce Sterling - The Scabs Progress" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

The Scab's Progress
by Paul Di Filippo and Bruce Sterling


The federal bio-containment center was a diatom the size of the Disney Matterhorn.
It perched on fractal struts in a particularly charmless district of Nevada, where the
waterless white sands swarmed with toxic vermin.

The entomopter scissored its dragonfly wings, conveying Ribo Zombie above the
desert wastes. This was always the best part of the program: the part where Ribo
Zombie lovingly checked out all his cool new gear before launching into action. As a
top-ranking scab from the otaku-pirate underground, Ribo Zombie owned reactive
gloves with slashproof ligaments and sandwiched Kevlar-polysaccharide. He owned
a mother-of-pearl crash helmet, hung with daring insouciance on the scaled wall of
the 'mopter's cockpit. And those Nevada desert boots!тАФlike something built by
Tolkien orcs with day-jobs at Nike.

Accompanying the infamous RZ was his legendary and much-merchandised familiar,
Skratchy Kat. Every scab owned a familiar: they were the totem animals of the
gene-pirate scene. The custom dated back to the birth of the scab subculture, when
tree-spiking Earth Firsters and obsessive dog breeders had jointly discovered the
benefits of outlaw genetic engineering.

With a flash of emerald eyes the supercat rose from the armored lap of the daring
scab. Skratchy Kat had some much cooler name in the Japanese collectors' market.
He'd been designed in Tokyo, and was a deft Pocket-Monster commingling of eight
spliced species of felines and viverines, with the look, the collector cachet, and
(judging by his stuffed-toy version) plenty of the smell of a civet cat. Ribo Zombie,
despite frequent on-screen cameos by busty-babe groupies, had never enjoyed any
steady feminine relationship. What true love there was in his life flowed between
man and cat.

Clickable product-placement hot-tags were displayed on the 'mopter screens as Ribo
Zombie's aircraft winged in for the kill. The ads sold magnums of cheap, post-
Greenhouse Reykjav├нk Champagne. Ringside tix to a Celebrity Deathmatch
(splatter-shields extra). Entomopter rentals in Vegas, with a rapid, low-cost divorce
optional.

Then, wham! Inertia hit the settling aircraft, gypsum-sand flew like pulverized
wallboard, and the entomopter's chitinous canopy accordioned open. Ribo Zombie
vaulted to the glistening sands, clutching his cat to his armored bosom. He set the
beast free with a brief, comradely exchange of meows, then sealed his facemask,
pulled a monster pistol, and plucked a retro-chic pineapple grenade from his
bandolier.

A pair of crystalline robot snakes fell to concussive explosions. Alluring vibrators
disoriented the numerous toxic scorpions in the vicinity. Three snarling jackalopes
fell to a well-aimed hail of dumdums. Meanwhile the dauntless cat, whose hide
beneath fluffy fur was as tough as industrial Teflon, had found a way through the
first hedge-barrier of barrel cacti.