"Charles Stross - Antibodies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

convenience no doubt. Two guys in cheap suits and five o'clock stubble to either
side of the doors. The officer who'd picked us up held the door open with one
hand, a can of pepper spray with the other. The burn obviously hadn't got far
enough into their heads yet: they were all wearing HUDS and mobile phone headsets,
like a police benevolent fund-raising crew rehearsing a Star Trek sketch. "Geoffrey
Smith. Martina Weber. We know what you are. Come this way. Slowly, now."

I got out of the van carefully. "Aren't you supposed to say 'prepare to be
assimilated' or something?"

That might have earned me a faceful of capsaicin but the guy on the leftтАФshort hair,
facial tic, houndstooth check sports jacket тАФ shook his head sharply. "Ha. Ha. Very
funny. Watch the woman, she's dangerous."

I glanced round. There was another van parked behind ours, door open: it had a big
high bandwidth dish on the roof, pointing at some invisible satellite. "Inside."

I went where I was told, Eve close behind me. "Am I under arrest?" I asked again. "I
want a lawyer!"

White-washed walls, heavy doors with reinforced frames, windows high and barred.
Institutional floor, scuffed and grimy. "Stop there." Houndstooth Man pushed past
and opened a door on one side. "In here." Some sort of interview room? We went
in. The other body in a suitтАФbuilt like a stone wall with a beer gut, wearing what
might have been a regimental tieтАФfollowed us and leaned against the door.

There was a table, bolted to the floor, and a couple of chairs, ditto. A video camera
in an armoured shell watched the table: a control box bolted to the tabletop looked
to be linked into it. Someone had moved a rack of six monitors and a maze of
ribbon-cable spaghetti into the back of the room, and for a wonder it wasn't bolted
down: maybe they didn't interview computer thieves inhere.

"Sit down." Houndstooth Man pointed at the chairs. We did as we were told; I had a
big hollow feeling in my stomach, but something told me a show of physical
resistance would be less than useless here. Houndstooth Man looked at me: orange
light from his HUD stained his right eyeball with a basilisk glare and I knew in my gut
that these guys weren't cops any more, they were cancer cells about to metastasize.

"You attempted to contact John Durant yesterday. Then you left your home area and
attempted to conceal your identities. Explain why." For the first time, I noticed a
couple of glassy black eyeballs on the mobile video wall. Houndstooth Man spoke
loudly and hesitantly, as if repeating something from a teleprompter.

"What's to explain?" asked Eve. "You are not human. You know we know this. We
just want to be left alone!" Not strictly true, but it was part of cover story 2.

"But evidence of your previous collusion is minimal. I am uncertain of potential
conspiracy extent. Conspiracy, treason, subversion! Are you human?"

"Yes," I said, emphatically oversimplifying.