"William Gibson - Hinterlands" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gibson William)

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William GIBSON
Hinterlands
[from LIB.RU]


When Hiro hit the switch, I was dreaming of Paris, dreaming of wet, dark streets in winter. The
pain came oscillating up from the floor of my skull, exploding behind my eyes in a wall of blue
neon; I jackknifed up out of the mesh hammock, screaming. I always scream; I make a point of it.
Feedback raged in my skull. The pain switch is an auxiliary circuit in the bonephone implant,
patched directly into the pain centers, just the thing for cutting through a surrogate's
barbiturate fog. It took a few seconds for my life to fall together, icebergs of biography looming
through the fog: who I was, where I was, what I was doing there, who was waking me.

Hiro's voice came crackling into my head through the bone-conduction implant.- "Damn, Toby. Know
what it does to my ears, you scream like that?"

"Know how much I care about your ears, Dr. Nagashima? I care about them as much as "

"No time for the litany of love, boy. We've got business. But what is it with these fifty-
millivolt spike waves off your temporals, hey? Mixing something with the downers to give it a
little color?"

"Your EEG's screwed, Hiro. You're crazy. I just want my sleep.

. . ." I collapsed into the hammock and tried to pull the darkness over me, but his voice was
still there.

"Sorry, my man, but you're working today. We got a ship back, an hour ago. Air-lock gang are out
there right now, sawing the reaction engine off so she'll just about fit through the door."

"Who is it?" "Leni Hofmannstahl, Toby, physical chemist, citizen of the Federal Republic of
Germany." He waited until I quit groaning. "It's a confirmed meatshot."

Lovely workaday terminology we've developed out here. He meant a returning ship with active
medical telemetry, contents one (1) body, warm, psychological status as yet unconfirmed. I shut my
eyes and swung there in the dark.

"Looks like you're her surrogate, Toby. Her profile syncs with Taylor's, but he's on leave."

I knew all about Taylor's "leave." He was out in the agricultural canisters, ripped on
amitriptyline, doing aerobic exercises to counter his latest bout with clinical depression. One of
the occupational hazards of being a surrogate. Taylor and I don't get along. Funny how you usually
don't, if the guy's psychosexual profile is too much like your own.

"Hey, Toby, where are you getting all that dope?" The question was ritual. "From Charmian?"

"From your mom, Hiro." He knows it's Charmian as well as I do.