"Cory Doctorow - Liberation Spectrum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dodd Christina)

Cobra called out more French, three lights on him, his rifle at his shoulder.
Two laser dots danced on him, and Lee-Daniel had an irrational urge to slap
them away, like horseflies.
The young girl hit her fogger, spraying a thick, opaque cloud of gas. "Cover
your eyes," she said, and giggled again. Lee-Daniel pulled his shirt up over
his face and dropped. He belly-crawled blindly, towards where he thought
Elaine and her crew had been treed.

He knocked his head on a tree trunk and gasped involuntarily, getting a
lungful of the gas, which made him retch into the depths of his shirt,
bringing on more gasps and more retching. He rolled for the clearing's edge,
hit another tree and got to his knees, heaving like a dog. He still had hold
of the tablet, and when he could open his eyes again, he looked into it, saw
the investors still staring at him, wide-eyed.

"Go!" he hissed. "Jesus, get to the goddamned bus."

"Are you all right?" they said.

"I'm fine," he said. "Go go go!" The CogRad drunk-ons were legendary. When you
spent weeks at a time in the deep bush on dry reservations, lugging gear and
fighting with bitch physics, you needed to unwind. It was traditional for a
drunken riot to ensue on off-days. Lee-Daniel occasionally partook, enough to
be friendly, but never so much that he lost control. He set a sane example,
and the crew followed it, and so the most harm that a big booze-on would cause
was a gang-wide neolithic hangover, swampy and hot and damp.

But the drunk-on that was proceeding when Lee-Daniel stumbled out of the
dining-room was like a heavily sponsored Bosch painting. Elaine was
alternately necking with and slapping Joey Riel; Mortimer was collapsed on a
heap of still-steaming rum- toddy cartons; the customer service reps were
playing kick-the-can with their ringing cellphones. The aerostats and the
advertorial screens had automatically adjusted to overcome the ambient noise
level, and were consequently pitching their jingles and come-ons at megaphone
levels.

Lee-Daniel stared blankly around at his crew, hands clasped together tightly
to keep them from shaking. He grabbed the first person he could lay hands on
-- the Tulsa switchgirl, beefy shoulders. Her name was Leeza, that was it, he
could remember it now. She whirled on him, one hand clenched, and he stood,
unflinching. She caught his eye blearily, breathing heavily through her nose.

He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, then righted a stool and patted it. She
sat down.

He moved on to the next employee. And the next. He arranged them in ranks, and
the din subsided. The drunkest CogRads kept on shouting, but they were in the
minority. Elaine was hollering at Joey Riel, who was hollering back, cords
standing out on both their necks.