"Richard Kadrey - Metrophage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kadrey Richard)

vegetables grew steadily smaller and more tasteless each season. All
that seemed to keep the market going was the communally owned
bank of leaking solar batteries. During the rolling brown-outs, they
alone kept the tortilla ovens hot, the fluorescents flickering, the
videos cranking.
Isn't it time you kids were in bed?" Jonny asked, stepping on

file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Metrophage.htm (4 of 191) [12/28/2004 12:40:39 AM]
Richard Kadrey: Metrophage

the toes of a lanky blonde camera man. Sprechen sie 'parasite'?"
Huddled in the doorways of clubs and arcades, groups of
fingerprint changers, nerve tissue merchants and brain cell thieves
regarded the crowd with hollow eyes, as if assessing their worth in
cash at every moment. The gangs, too, were out in force that hot
night: the Lizard Imperials (snake-skin boots and surgically split
tongues), the Zombie Analytics (subcutaneous pixels offering up
flickering flesh-images of dead video and rock stars), the anarchist-
physician Croakers, the Yakuza Rebels and the Gypsy Titans; even the
Naginata Sisters were out, swinging blades and drinking on the
corner in front of the Iron Orchid.
As Jonny crossed Sunset, a few of the Sisters waved to him.
When he waved back, a gust of wind pulled open his tunic, revealing
his Futukoro Automatic. The Sisters whooped and laughed at the
sight of the weapon, feigning terror. A tall Sister with Maori facial
tattoos crooked her finger and began blasting him with an imaginary
gun.
Coming toward him from the opposite direction was a ring of
massive Otoko Niku. Meat Boys-- uniformly ugly acromegalic giants,
each easily three meters tall. In the center of the protective ring, an
old Yakuza oyabun openly stared and pointed at people. It was rare
enough for people to see a pure-blood Japanese in the street that
they stopped to stare back, until the Meat Boys cuffed them away.
Jonny thought of a word then.
Gaijin. Foreigner. Alien.
That's me. I'm gaijin, Jonny thought. He could find little comfort
in the familiarity of the streets. Jonny realized that by
acknowledging his desire to kill Easy Money, he had cut himself off
from everybody around him. He walked slower. Twice he almost
turned back.
A tiny nisei girl tried to sell him a peculiar local variation on
sushi-- refried beans and raw tuna wrapped in a corn husk--
commonly known as Salmonella Roll. Jonny declined and ducked into
an alley. There, he swallowed two tabs of Desoxyn, hijacked from a
Committee warehouse.
It was good stuff. Very soon, a tingling began in his finger-
tips and moved up his arms, filling him with a pleasantly tense,
almost sexual, energy. Beads of sweat broke out on his hands and
face, ran down his chest. He thought of Sumi.