"Charles Stross - Rogue Farm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

"'Ow the hell can something with nine legs and eye stalks call itself human?" Joe
demanded, chugging back half his pint in one angry swallow.

"It used to be, once. Maybe used to be a bunch of people." Wendy gota weird and witchy
look in her eye: "'ad a boyfriend back thirty, forty years ago, joined a Lamarckian clade.
Swapping genes an' all, the way you or me'd swap us underwear. Used to be a
'viromentalist back when antiglobalisation was about big corporations pissing on us all
for profits. Got into gene hackery and self-sufficiency bigtime. I slung his fucking ass
when he turned green and started photosynthesizing."

"Bastards," Joe muttered. It was deep green folk like that who'd killed off the
agricultural-industrial complex in the early years of the century, turning large portions of
the countryside into ecologically devastated wilderness gone to rack and ruin. Bad
enough that they'd set millions of countryfolk out of work -- but that they'd gone on to
turn green, grow extra limbs and emigrate to Jupiter orbit was adding insult to injury.
And having a good time in the process, by all accounts. "Din't you'ave a farm problem,
coupla years back?"

"Aye, did that," said Art. He clutched his pint mug protectively.

"It went away," Joe mused aloud.

"Yeah, well." Wendy stared at him cautiously.

"No fireworks, like." Joe caught her eye. "And no body. Huh."

"Metabolism," said Wendy, apparently coming to some kind of decision. "That's where
it's at."

"Meat --" Joe, no biogeek, rolled the unfamiliar word around his mouth irritably. "I used
to be a software dude before I burned, Rats. You'll have to 'splain the jargon fore using
it."

"You ever wondered how those farms get to Jupiter?" Wendy probed.

"Well." Joe shook his head. "They, like, grow stage trees? Rocket logs? An' then they
est-ee-vate and you are fucked if they do it next door'cause when those trees go up they
toast about a hundred hectares?"

"Very good," Wendy said heavily. She picked up her mug in both hands and gnawed on
the rim, edgily glancing around as if hunting for police gnats. "Let's you and me take a
hike."

Pausing at the bar for Ole Brenda to refil her mug, Wendy led Joe out past Spiffy Buerke
-- throwback in green wellingtons and Barbour jacket-- and her latest femme, out into
what had once been a car park and was now a tattered wasteground out back behind the
pub. It was dark, and no residual light pollution stained the sky: the Milky Way was
visible overhead, along with the pea-sized red cloud of orbitals that had gradually
swallowed Jupiter over the past few years. "You wired?" asked Wendy.