"Garbage Day" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mccarthy Wil)

on a wall, and you get a pile of steaming garbage."
"Except that it wouldn't steam," Conrad said. "It wouldn't stink. It might look
like shit, or half-eaten food, or whatever. Probably even feel like it. But
pseudoatoms don't have a smell. They can't leak out into the air, like real
atoms and molecules do."
"Oh," Bascal said, suddenly uncertain. It wasn't a look that fit his face.
"Still, that's pretty amazing that you thought of that. You have got power for
the separated objects, right? They're photovoltaic enough to maintain their own
programming? And composition?"
"Um. I don't know."
"Oh," Conrad said. "Probably not, then. You'll just wind up with garbage-shaped
chunks of nanofiber silicon. It's probably dangerous, too. I mean, there's more
wellstone in a building than just the facade, right? You'd better be real
careful what you touch with that thing, or you're going to hurt somebody."
"Who made you the voice of reason?" Ho Ng asked, acidly.
"Um, nobody."
"Why don't you shut up, then? Pussy."
Conrad had no response to that. He'd already said what needed saying. Getting
any further on Ho's bad side was not a smart idea, and he could see that Bascal
was brooding, too, looking around with dark, embarrassed anger. That anger
could, Conrad knew, be directed at him at any moment. He considered apologizing,
but didn't see how that would help. Better just to pretend he wasn't here.
"Are we still doing this?" Steve Grush wanted to know.
"Yeah," Bascal said, waving a hand distractedly. "Let me think about it for a
minute." Then he pinched his chin in a gesture so reminiscent of his father that
for a moment Bascal might have been a younger image of the king himself. A
little swarthier, perhaps. A bit more angular. Conrad felt a fresh burst of
affection for this boy, this young man, this Poet Prince of all humanity.
"I have to visit the 'soir," Feck announced loudly, from the other end of the
balcony. That was short for pissoir, and told everyone exactly, biologically,
what he'd be doing when he got there. If he'd said 'toir, or shittoir, that
would convey a different intention. You always knew more about Feck than you
wanted to. Still, it was funny Ч Feck was pretty funny sometimes Ч and suddenly
there was a lot of laughter, and the conversation turned to other subjects.
"Sorry," Conrad said quietly, seeing his Bascal opening as Feck shuffled past.
"It's still a pretty raw idea."
"Shut up," Bascal said vaguely, not looking at him.
Taking the hint, Conrad finished his beer, then just as quietly finished his
coffee. Both were making him thirstier, but he resisted the urge to chase them
with a glass of water. In a few minutes he was going to have to visit the 'soir
himself. He supposed they all were. He toyed with his coffee mug instead,
clinking it a few times on the glass tabletop. Turning it over a few times in
his hands. Good, old-fashioned stoneware, courtesy of the Friendly Products
corporation, whose swirling green logo was glazed into the underside.
This didn't take any great scrutiny to discern; the same instantly recognizable
design appeared on their Camp Friendly tee-shirts, and on thousands of
child-oriented products produced daily by the fax machines of the world. Seeing
it here was admittedly somewhat surprising. What was child-oriented about a
coffee mug? He fantasized briefly, that this whole cafe Ч perhaps this whole
ghetto Ч was just one more Friendly Park, in a carefully supervised Friendly