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

threaded with barbed wire and roses. "Yes, I'm a nube," I say. My parole ring makes my left index finger
tingle, a little reminder. "I'm required to warn you that I'm undergoing identity reindexing and
rehabilitation. IтАФpeople in my stateтАФmay be prone to violent outbursts. Don't worry, that's just a


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Stross,%20Charles%20-%20Glasshouse%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (2 of 252)8-12-2006 23:41:53
 Glasshouse

statutory warning: I won't hurt you. What makes you ask?"

She shrugs. It's an elaborate rippling gesture that ends with a wiggle of her hips. "Because I haven't seen
you here before, and I've been coming here most nights for the past twenty or thirty diurns. You can earn
extra rehab credit by helping out. Don't worry about the parole ring, most of us here have them. I had to
warn people myself a while ago."

I manage to force a smile. A fellow inmate? Further along the program? "Would you like a drink?" I ask,
gesturing at the chair next to me. "And what are you called, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I'm Kay." She pulls out the chair and sits, flipping her great mass of dark hair over her shoulder and
tucking her skulls under the table with two hands as she glances at the menu. "Hmm, I think I will have
an iced double mocha pickup, easy on the coca." She looks at me again, staring at my eyes. "The clinic
arranges things so that there's always a volunteer around to greet nubes. It's my turn this swing shift. Do
you want to tell me your name? Or where you're from?"

"If you like." My ring tingles, and I remember to smile. "My name's Robin, and you're right, I'm fresh
out of the rehab tank. Only been out for a meg, to tell the truth." (A bit over ten planetary days, a million
seconds.) "I'm from"тАФI go into quicktime for a few subseconds, trying to work out what story to give
her, ending up with an approximation of the truthтАФ"around these parts, actually. But just out of memory
excision. I was getting stale and needed to do something about whatever it was I was getting stale over."

Kay smiles. She's got sharp cheekbones, bright teeth framed between perfect lips; she's got bilateral
symmetry, three billion years of evolutionary heuristics and homeobox genes generating a face that's a
mirror of itselfтАФand where did that thought come from? I ask myself, annoyed. It's tough, not being
able to tell the difference between your own thoughts and a postsurgical identity prosthesis.

"I haven't been human for long," she admits. "I just moved here from Zemlya." Pause. "For my surgery,"
she adds quietly.

I fiddle with the tassels dangling from my sword pommel. There's something not quite right about them,
and it's bugging me intensely. "You lived with the ice ghouls?" I ask.

"Not quiteтАФI was an ice ghoul."

That gets my attention: I don't think I've ever met a real live alien before, even an ex-alien. "Were you"тАФ
what's the word?тАФ"born that way, or did you emigrate for a while?"

"Two questions." She holds up a finger. "Trade?"

"Trade." I remember to nod without prompting, and my ring sends me a flicker of warmth. It's crude
conditioning: reward behavior indicative of recovery, punish behavior that reinforces the postsurgical