"Christopher Rowe - The Voluntary State" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rowe Christopher)

Soma had parked his car in the trailhead lot above
Governor's Beach. A safe place, usually, checked regularly by
the Tennessee Highway Patrol and surrounded on three sides
by the limestone cliffs that plunged down into the Gulf of
Mexico.
But today, after his struggle up the trail from the beach,
he saw that his car had been attacked. The driver's side
window had been kicked in.
Soma dropped his pack and rushed to his car's side. The
car shied away from him, backed to the limit of its tether
before it recognized him and turned, let out a low, pitiful
moan.
"Oh, car," said Soma, stroking the roof and opening the
passenger door, "Oh, car, you're hurt." Then Soma was
rummaging through the emergency kit, tossing aside flares
and bandages, finally, finally finding the glass salve. Only
after he'd spread the ointment over the shattered window and
brushed the glass shards out onto the gravel, only after he'd
sprayed the whole door down with analgesic aero, only then
did he close his eyes, access call signs, drop shields. He
opened his head and used it to call the police.
In the scant minutes before he saw the cadre of blue and
white bicycles angling in from sunward, their bubblewings
pumping furiously, he gazed down the beach at Nashville. The
cranes the Governor had ordered grown to dredge the harbor
would go dormant for the winter soonтАФalready their acres-
broad leaves were tinged with orange and gold.


3
 The Voluntary State
by Christopher Rowe


"Soma-With-The-Paintbox-In-Printer's-Alley," said voices
from above. Soma turned to watch the policemen land. They
all spoke simultaneously in the sing-song chant of law
enforcement. "Your car will be healed at taxpayers' expense."
Then the ritual words, "And the wicked will be brought to
justice."
****


Efficiency and order took over the afternoon as the
threatened rain began to fall. One of the 144 Detectives
manifested, Soma and the policemen all looking about as they
felt the weight of the Governor's servant inside their heads. It
brushed aside the thoughts of one of the Highway Patrolmen