"Charles Stross - Merchant princes 02 - The Hidden Family" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

gears like a car in neutral. She filled the kettle, set it on the hob to boil,
began searching for tea bags. There's got to be a way to make this work better,
she thought. The real problem was mobility. If she could just arrange how to
meet up with Brill fifteen miles down the road without having to walk the
distance herselfтАФ"Oh," she said, as the kettle began to boil.

"What is it?" asked Brill, behind her.

"It's so obvious!" Miriam said as she picked the kettle up. "I should have
figured it out before."

"Figured? What ails you?"

She poured boiling water into the teapot. "A form of speech. I meant, I've
worked out what I need to do." She put the lid on the pot, moved it onto a tray,
and picked it up to carry back into the living room. "Go on."

"You've hatched a plan?"
"Yes." Miriam kicked the kitchen door shut behind her. "It's quite simple. I've
been worrying about having to camp in the woods in winter, or make myself
understood, or keep up appearances with you. That's wrong. What I should have
been thinking about is how I can move myself about, over there, to somewhere
where there's shelter, without involving anyone else. Right?"

"That makes sense." Brilliana looked dubious. "But how are you going to do that,
unless you walk? You couldn't take a horse through. Come to think of it, I
haven't seen any horses hereтАФ"

Miriam took a deep breath. "Brill, when Paulie gets back I think we're going to
go shopping. For an all-terrain bicycle, a pair of night-vision goggles, a
sewing machine, and some fabric..."

* * *

The devil was in the details. In the end it took Miriam two days to buy her
bicycle. She spent the first day holed up with cycle magazines, spokehead Web
sites, and the TV blaring extreme sports at her. The second day consisted of
being patronized in successive shops by men in skintight neon Lycra bodysuits,
to Brill's quietly scandalized amusement. In the end, the vehicle of Miriam's
desire turned out to be a Dahon folding mountain bike, built out of chromed
aluminium tubes. It wasn't very light, but at thirty poundsтАФincluding carrying
case and toolsetтАФshe could carry it across easily enough, and it wasn't a toy.
It was a real mountain bike that folded down into something she could haul in a
backpack and, more importantly, something that could carry herself and a full
load over dirt trails as fast as a horse.

"What is that thing?" Brill asked, when she finished unfolding it on a spread of
newspapers on Paulette's living room carpet. "It looks like something you
torture people with."