"Gibson, William - New Rose Hotel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gibson William)

animated holograms advertising French software.
We strolled past bales of raw wool and plastic tubs of Chinese
microchips.
I hinted that my employers planned to manufacture synthetic
beta-endorphin.
Always try to give them something they understand.
Sandii, I remember you in Harajuka, sometimes. Close my eyes in this
coffin and I can see you there -- all the glitter, crystal maze of the
boutiques, the smell of new clothes. I see your cheekbones ride past chrome
racks of Paris leathers. Sometimes I hold your hand.
We thought we'd found you, Sandii, but really you'd found us. Now I
know you were looking for us, or for someone like us. Fox was delighted,
grinning over our find: such a pretty new tool, bright as any scalpel. Just
the thing to help us sever a stubborn Edge, like Hiroshi's, from the jealous
parent-body of Maas Biolabs. You must have been searching a long time,
looking for a way out, all those nights down Shinjuku. Nights you carefully
cut from the scattered deck of your past.
My own past had gone down years before, lost with all hands, no
trace. I understood Fox's late-night habit of emptying his wallet, shuffling
through his identification. He'd lay the pieces out in different patterns,
rearrange them, wait for a picture to form. I knew what he was looking for.
You did the same thing with your childhoods. In New Rose, tonight, I choose
from your deck of pasts.
I choose the original version, the famous Yokohama hotelroom text,
recited to me that first night in bed. I choose the disgraced father, Hosaka
executive. Hosaka. How perfect. And the Dutch mother, the summers in
Amsterdam, the soft blanket of pigeons in the Dam Square afternoon.
I came in out of the heat of Marrakech into Hilton air conditioning.
Wet shirt clinging cold to the small of my back while I read the message
you'd relayed through Fox. You were in all the way; Hiroshi would leave his
wife. It wasn't difficult for you to communicate with us, even through the
clear, tight film of Maas security; you'd shown Hiroshi the perfect little
place for coffee and kipferl. Your favorite waiter was white-haired, kindly,
walked with a limp, and worked for us. You left your messages under the
linen napkin.
All day today I watched a small helicopter cut a tight grid above
this country of mine, the land of my exile, the New Rose Hotel. Watched from
my hatch as its patient shadow crossed the grease-stained concrete. Close.
Very close.
I left Marrakech for Berlin. I met with a Welshman in a bar and
began to arrange for Hiroshi's disappearance. It would be a complicated
business, intricate as the brass gears and sliding mirrors of Victorian
stage magic, but the desired effect was simple enough. Hiroshi would step
behind a hydrogen-cell Mercedes and vanish. The dozen Maas agents who
followed him constantly would swarm around the van like ants; the Maas
security apparatus would harden around his point of departure like epoxy.
They know how to do business promptly in Berlin. I wits even able to
arrange a last night with you. I kept it secret from Fox; he might not have
approved. Now I've forgotten the town's name. I knew it for an hour on the
autobahn, under a gray Rhenish sky, and forgot it in your arms.