"William Gibson - Spook Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gibson William)

door swung open on darkness and the red power indicator of what Milgrim assumed was a computer.
He stepped in before Brown had a chance to shove him.

He was concentrating on the tiny tablet of Ativan melting beneath his tongue. It had reached that stage
where it was there but not there, merely a focal point of grittiness, reminding him of the microscopic
scales on the wings of a butterfly.

тАЬWhy do they call it that?тАЭ Brown asked, absently, as the uncomfortably bright beam of his flashlight
began a methodical interrogation of the roomтАЩs contents.

Milgrim heard the door click shut behind them.

It was uncharacteristic of Brown to ask anything absently, and Milgrim took it to indicate tension. тАЬCall it
what?тАЭ Milgrim resented having to speak. He wanted to concentrate fully on that instant when the
sublingual tablet phase-shifted from being to not-being.

The beam came to rest on one of those directorтАЩs-chair barstools, standing beside some kind of janitorial
sink.

The place smelled of someone living there, but not unpleasantly.

тАЬWhy do they call it that?тАЭ Brown repeated, with a deliberate and ominous calm. Brown was not the sort
of man to willingly voice words or names he found beneath him, either for reasons of their insufficient
gravitas or because they were foreign.

тАЬVolapuk,тАЭ said Milgrim, feeling the Ativan finally do its not-there trick. тАЬWhen they text, theyтАЩre keying
in a visual approximation of Cyrillic, the Russian alphabet. They use our alphabet, and some numerals,
but only according to the Cyrillic letters they most closely resemble.тАЭ

тАЬI asked you why they call it that.тАЭ

тАЬEsperanto,тАЭ Milgrim said. тАЬThat was an artificial language, a scheme for universal communication.
Volapuk was another. When the Russians got themselves computers, the keyboards and screen displays
were Roman, not Cyrillic. They faked up something that looked like Cyrillic, out of our characters. They
called it Volapuk. I guess you could say it was a joke.тАЭ

But Brown was not that sort of man. тАЬFuck that,тАЭ he said flatly, his definitive judgment on Volapuk, on
Milgrim, on these IFs he was so interested in. IF was Brown-speak, Milgrim had learned, for Illegal
Facilitator, a criminal whose crimes facilitated the crimes of others.

тАЬHold this.тАЭ Brown passed Milgrim the flashlight, which was made of knurled metal, professionally
nonreflective. The pistol Brown wore beneath his parka, largely made of composite resin, was equally
nonreflective. It was like shoes and accessories, Milgrim thought; someone does alligator, the next week
theyтАЩre all doing it. It was the season of this nonreflective noncolor, in Browntown. But a very long
season, Milgrim guessed.

Brown was snapping on a pair of green latex surgical gloves heтАЩd taken from a pocket.

Milgrim held the flashlight where Brown wanted it, savoring the perspective being afforded by the Ativan.
HeтАЩd once dated a woman who liked to say that the windows of army surplus stores constituted hymns