"Bruce Sterling - Heavy Weather" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Jane had structure-hit the door earlier, on her way out of the
clinic. She'd distracted her security escort for two vital seconds
and craftily jammed the exit's elaborate keypad lock with a quick,
secret gush of glue. Jane had palmed the aerosol glue can, a tiny
thing not much bigger than a shotgun cartridge. Glue spray was one of
Carol's favorite tricks, something Carol had taught her. Carol could
do things with glue spray that were halfway to witchcraft.
Despite the power outage, the door's keypad lock was still alive on
its battery backup-but the door mistakenly thought it was working.
Smart machines were smart enough to make some really dumb blunders.
Jane closed the door gently behind her. It was chilly inside the
building, pitch-black and silent and sepulchral. A good thing,
because she'd immediately begun to sweat like crazy in the stifling
gloves, hood, overalls, mask, and boots. Her armpits prickled with
terror sweat as if she were being tattooed there. Cops-or worse yet,
private-industry investigators-could do plenty with the tiniest bits
of evidence these days. Fingerprints, sboeprints, stray hairs, a
speck of clothing fiber, one lousy wisp of
DNA...
Jane reached inside her paper suit through a slit behind its hip
pocket. She unclipped the penlight from her webbing belt. The little
light clicked faithfully under her thumb and a reddish glow lit the
hail. Jane took a step down the hall, two, three, and then the fear
left her completely, and she began to glide across the ceramic
tiling, skid-dancing in her damp paper boot covers.
She hadn't expected burglary to be such a visceral thrill. She'd been
inside plenty of ruined buildings-just like everyone else from her
generation-but she'd never broken her way into a live one. A rush of
wicked pleasure touched her like a long cold kiss on the back of the
neck.
Jane tried the first door to her left. The knob slid beneath her
latexed fingers-locked. Jane had a handheld power jigsaw on the
webbing belt that would slice through interior door locks like a
knife through a wedding cake, and for a moment her left hand worked
inside the paper suit and she touched the jigsaw's lovely checkered
rubber grip. But she stopped. She wisely resisted the urge to break
into the room just for the thrill of it. Would they be locking Alex
into a room at night? Not likely. Not night-owl Alex.
Stubborn, mean-tempered, night-owl Alex. Even at death's. < door,
Alex wouldn't put up with that.
Next door. Unlocked. Room empty.
Next door. It was unlocked too. Some kind of janitor's supply, rags
and jugs and paper. A good place to start a diversionary fire if you
needed to.
Next door. Unlocked. The room stank. Like cough medicine cut with
absinthe. Little red-eyed machines on the walls and floor, still
alive on their battery backup. Jane's dim red light played over a big
empty bed, then on a startling knot of hideous shadow-some kind of
half-wilted monster houseplant.
She hadn't found her brother yet, but she could sense his presence.