"Peter F. Hamilton - The Nano flower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

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CHAPTER ONE

Suzi crapped the Frankenstein cockroach into the toilet bowl, then pushed the chrome handle
halfway down
for a short flush.
She concentrated on the neural icon which seemed to hover at the periphery of her consciousness,
and marshalled her thoughts into a distinct instruction sequence. Activate Sense Linkage and
Directional Control, she ordered her bioware processor implant.
When she closed her eyes the ghostly image from the cockroach's infrared-sensitive retinas
intensified to its full resolution. There was a moment of disorientation as she interpreted the
picture being fed along the optical fibre plugged into her coccyx ganglion splice. It was a hazy
jumble of M├╢bius topology, shaded red, pink, and black, a convolution through which green moons
fell. The cockroach was clinging to the bottom of the sewer pipe directly underneath a shower of
droplets from the toilet downpipe. Directional graphics superimposed themselves across the
picture, resembling an aircraft pilot's command display.
Suzi guided the cockroach up the side of the sewer pipe until it was out of the water channel,
then set it walking. Optical fibre began to unspool behind it, thinner than a cobweb.
Perspective was tricky. She allowed herself to believe she was walking through some baroque nether-
world cathedral. The fluted walls had a black-mirror sheen, carved with a fabulous abstract glyph.
Above her, the curving roof was punctured by elliptical ebony holes, all of them spitting
phosphene-green globules. A small river slithered down the concave floor, bearing away
unidentifiable lumps of pale fibrous matter. She was suddenly very glad Jools the Tool hadn't
stitched any olfactory receptors into the Frankenstein cockroach when he was putting it together
for her.
Pressure-sensitive cell clusters detected the rush of air,
2
PETER F. HAMILTON
warning her of the approaching flush. She scuttled the cockroach right up to the roof of the
sewer. The burst of water churned past underneath her. A turd the size of a cargo ship rode the
wavefront, trailing ribbons of disintegrating paper.
She waited until the surge had gone, then brought the cockroach back down the curving pipe and
carried on forwards. Fungal growths were blooming out of cracks in the concrete, moonscape
mattresses of slime. The cockroach clambered over the humps without even slowing, all the while
spinning out its gossamer thread.
Up ahead, where the pipe contracted to a black vanishing point, she thought she saw something
move.


In a way, Suzi considered the Morrell deal as a vindication of the way she had lived the last
twelve years. There was no violence involved, not even a hint of it. Violence had launched her
into the tekmerc game after she got out of prison. Organized violence, deliberately and precisely
applied. It was her trade, all she knew.
Her teens and early twenties had been spent in the Trinities, an anti-PSP gang operating out of
the Mucklands Wood estate in Peterborough during the years when the People's Socialism Party
controlled the country, a long dark decade of near-Maoist dictatorship just after the Greenhouse
Effect ran riot.
She had joined up the day after a squad of PSP Card Carriers ransacked her parents' hotel,
stripping out the fittings, stealing the booze. Her father had been pistol whipped, a beating