"William Gibson - All tomorrow's parties" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gibson William)

"Come in," says the old man, in Japanese. "Don't leave your ass hanging out that way." He is naked
except for a sort of breechclout twisted from what may once have been a red T-shirt. He is seated,
cross-legged, on a ragged, paint-flecked tatami mat. He holds a brightly colored toy figure in one
hand, a slender brush in the other. Yamazaki sees that the thing is a model of some kind, a robot
or military exoskeleton. It glitters in the sun-bright light, blue and red and silver. Small tools
are spread on the tatami: a razor knife, a sprue cutter, curls of emery paper.
The old man is very thin, clean-shaven but in need of a haircut. Wisps of gray hair hang on either
side of his face, and his mouth is set in what looks to be a permanent scowl of disapproval. He
wears glasses with heavy black plastic frames and archaically thick lenses. The lenses catch the
light.
Yamazaki creeps obediently into the carton, feeling the door flap drop shut behind him. On hands
and knees, he resists the urge to try to bow.
"He's waiting," the old man says, his brush tip poised above the figure in his hand. "In there."
Moving only his head.


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Yamazaki sees that the carton has been reinforced with mailing tubes, a system that echoes the
traditional post-and-beam architecture of Japan, the tubes lashed together with lengths of
salvaged poly-ribbon. There are too many objects here, in this tiny space. Towels and blankets and
cooking pots on cardboard shelves. Books. A small television.
"In there?" Yamazaki indicates what he takes to be another door, like the entrance to a hutch,
curtained with a soiled square of melon-yellow, foam-cored blanket, the sort of blanket one finds
in a capsule hotel. But the brush tip dips to touch the model, and the old man is lost in the
concentration this requires, soYamazaki shuffles on hands and knees across the absurdly tiny space
and draws the section of blanket aside. Darkness.
"Laney-San?"
What seems to be a crumpled sleeping bag. He smells sickness- "Yeah?" A croak. "In here."
Drawing a deep breath, Yamazaki crawls in, pushing his notebook before him. When the melon-yellow
blanket falls across the entrance, brightness glows through the synthetic fabric and the thin foam
core, like tropical sunlight seen from deep within some coral grotto.
"Laney?"
The American groans. Seems to turn, or sit up. Yamazaki can't see. Something covers Laney's eyes.
Red wink of a diode. Cables. Faint gleam of the interface, reflected in a thin line against
Laney's sweat-slick cheekbone.
"I'm deep in, now," Laney says, and coughs.
"Deep in what?"
"They didn't follow you, did they?"
"I don't think so."
"I could tell if they had."
Yamazaki feels sweat run suddenly from both his armpits, coursing down across his ribs. He forces
himself to breathe. The air here is foul, thick. He thinks of the seventeen known strains of multi-
drug-resistant tuberculosis

Laney draws a ragged breath. "But they aren't looking for me, are they?"

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