"Kim Stanley Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

Unfortunately the traffic light at the end of the exit ramp was red and there was a car stopped there,
waiting for it to change. Frank had to stop. Instantly there was athunk and he jerked forward. The pickup
truck had rear-ended him, tapping him hard from behind.

тАЬYOU FUCKER!тАЭ Frank shouted, now frightened; he had tangled with a madman! The truck was
backing up, presumably to ram him again, so he put his little Honda in reverse and shot back into the
truck, like hitting a wall, then shifted again and shot off into the narrow gap to the right of the car waiting
at the light, turning right and accelerating into a gap between the cars zipping by, which caused more
angry honks. He checked his rearview mirror and saw the light had changed and the pickup truck was
turning to follow him, and not far behind. тАЬShit!тАЭ

Frank accelerated, saw an opening in traffic coming the other way, and took a sharp left across all lanes
onto Glebe, even though it was the wrong direction for NSF. Then he floored it and began weaving
desperately through cars he was rapidly overtaking, checking the rearview mirror when he could. The
pickup appeared in the distance, squealing onto Glebe after him. Frank cursed in dismay.
 He decided to drive directly to a fire station he recalled seeing on Lee Highway. He took a left on Lee
and accelerated as hard as the little fuel-cell car could to the fire station, squealing into its parking lot and
then jumping out and hurrying toward the building, looking back down Lee toward Glebe.

But the madman never appeared. Gone. Lost the trail, or lost interest. Off to harass someone else.

Cursing still, Frank checked his carтАЩs rear. No visible damage, amazingly. He got back in and drove
south to the NSF building, involuntarily reliving the experience. He had no clear idea why it had
happened. He had driven around the guy but he had not really cut him off, and though it was true he had
been poaching on 66, so had the guy. It was inexplicable. And it occurred to him that in the face of such
behavior modeling devices like prisonersтАЩ dilemma were useless. People did not make rational
judgments. Especially, perhaps, the people driving too-large pickup trucks, this one of the
dirty-and-dinged variety rather than the factory-fresh steroidal battleships that the areaтАЩs carpenters
drove. Possibly then it had been some kind of class thing, the resentment of an unemployed gas-guzzler
against a white-collar type in a fuel-cell car. The past attacking the future, reactionary attacking
progressive, poor attacking affluent. A beta male in an alpha machine, enraged that an alpha male thought
he was so alpha he could zip around in a beta machine and get away with it.

Something like that. Some kind of asshole jerk-off loser, already drunk and disorderly at sevenA .M.

Despite all that, Frank found himself driving into the NSF buildingтАЩs basement parking with just enough
time to get to the elevators and up to the third floor at the last possible on-time moment. He hurried to the
menтАЩs room, splashed water on his face. He had to clear his mind of the ugly incident immediately, and it
had been so strange and unpleasant that this was not particularly difficult. Incongruent awfulness without
consequence is easily dismissed from the mind. So he pulled himself together, went out to do his job.
Time to concentrate on the dayтАЩs work. His plan for the panel was locked in by the people he had
convened for it. The scare on the road only hardened his resolve, chilled his blood.



He entered the conference room assigned to their panel. Its big inner window gave everyone the
standard view of the rest of NSF, and the panelists who hadnтАЩt been there before looked up into the
beehive of offices making the usual comments aboutRear Window and the like. тАЬA kind of ersatz
collegiality,тАЭ one of them said, must have been Nigel Pritchard.