"Nancy Kress - The Sleepless - Sleeping Dogs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

Net. When one of Denny's girlfriends complains that I "talk snooty," I realize that my vocabulary has changed. Well, wh
. . . everything else has.
By the time crocuses push up through the snow, Denny can't teach me any more. Actually, I know much mor
Denny's taught me, because I found other people on the Subnet who also taught me things. There's an entire class of S
ridersтАФmostly young, mostly with little to lose personallyтАФwho like nothing better than showing off what they know
learned how to let such people impress me.
However, that sort of petty rider only knows so much. So does Denny. And I have nothing to trade. So far I h
been able to get the Subnet to tell me the one thing I want to know the most. And I'm not going to find it out by staying
I write notes to Denny and Daddy, and I walk down the mountain to the highway.

The Red Goldfish Trucking Company is guarded by dogs.
There's a fence, too, of course, a single strand of token wire to mark the Y-energy-alarmed barrier surroundin
facility. I push against the invisible field with one hand, and it feels solid as brick. But any power-generated security s
has to be turned on, and that means it can be turned off. Dogs are harder to turn off, unless you kill them, and it's hard
anything like a bullet or a slab of poisoned meat through most Y-energy security fields without setting off the alarm. The
Subnet rumor that the Sleepless have developed a missile to penetrate Y-barriers, plus a field that will stop that same m
and anything else, including air. But it's only a rumor. Sleepless do not sell weapons. They're too smart to arm their enem
I stand a few inches outside the fence and gaze in at the Red Goldfish Trucking Company. It's a windowless foa
building standing in the middle of rows of white trucks, each with a red goldfish painted on both sides. Before the go
those trucks bore flowing blue script that said Pennsylvania Shipping. Before that, they had the blue daisies of F
Delivery Systems. Before that, the orange lettering of Stanley Express. It was a Stanley Express truck that delivered L
the pregnant dog to Daddy's new business.
No record exists on-line of that transaction. It's hard enough to track the company itself on the Subnet, let alo
customers. Or its owner.
I watch through the fence for two nights, very carefully, until I'm sure about the dogs. There are three dogs, all G
shepherds, all unneutered males. They're probably genemod for strength and hearing. They're superbly trained, much
than poor Donna could have done. They sleep in shifts. They are not genemod for intelligence.
You can do certain things to the genetic makeup of dogs and they remain functioning dogs. Other things you can
You can't really boost a dog's intelligence much. If you do, you end up with a pattern of neural connections too compl
the hindbrain to handle. It's like a cable jammed with too much information. The signal breaks down. The pups just sit
place and shiver and whimper. They can't be fixed, and eventually you have to kill them. Some scientists at Ha
published a paper about this on the Net. Some underground labs in Ohio and Florida already knew it. They advertised
IQ DOGS! on the Subnet. Until they didn't anymore. Somebody's looking for them, too, although I don't think it's an
customer. I think it's the cops.
The cops are the main link between the Net and the Subnet. But they're not the only link.
Red Goldfish Trucking's dogs patrol the entire fence every six minutes. They're efficient, alert, and dedicated. But t
still dogs.
Just before one of them passes my place outside the fence, I roll over on my back. I'm wearing perfume: a
genetically created as a wolf attractant for use in Consolidated Wilderness Areas. It was developed at the Univers
California at La Jolla, which holds the patent. It was also developed at underground labs in Idaho and Minnesota. Yo
order it at Subnet 784jKevinMart, access route 43ICE7946, through JemalTown, Cash Drop Described Elsewhere.
The guard dog smells me. His gait falters. His gaze shoots sideways to me, on my back on the ground, all fours in th
the posture of submission in wolf packs. And dog packs. But I'm outside the fence. After that brief falter, he resum
normal pace and trots on.
Six minutes later, I'm still there.
 At midnight the dogs change shifts; I don't know on what conditioned signal. The new dog goes through the
reaction to me: faltering, then going on. I roll slightly, wiggling, my limbs in the air. At 3:00 a.m., I go home. Workers sho
here every day at four.
I'm back the next night. And the next. During the day I work for a housecleaning company that sends out maids t
houses. Very quickly I become popular with their customers. I'm skillful at using the special bots for each job, an