"Charles Stross - Scratch Monkey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

of a liability than anything else; its purpose is unmistakable.
It's been nearly two hundred and fifty years since anyone physically visited this world. Since then
it's been out of touch except for the basic Dreamtime function, a one-way stream of emigr├й
minds. People dying and being uploaded into the wider continuum supported by our insterstellar
digital afterlife. The same people being shunted out across the interstellar gatecoder links,
funnelled into whatever corner of the growing Dreamtime has room for the additional load,
because they don't know how to work the system. Yes, this planet's on the net, but nobody here
knows how to use it. There are more things to the Dreamtime net than interstellar travel and
continued consciousness after death: but it takes a certain degree of knowledge to make use of
them.
Burying the armour is hard work without power assistance, so I just dig a shallow trench and pull
some loose undergrowth over it. Then I stare at the spot, and think hard; a sapphire triangle
appears in my left eye as my inertial tracker locks on. Something grabs at my attention for a
moment: a flashback to a childhood of darkness. I shiver, breathe deeply and look round again.
The colours -- that's what I can never get over. (The colours: try explaining them to a blind
woman.)
... Or to a corpse. I hunker down and switch to infrared, and boost my ears so that the dull rumble
of the engine coming up the road is overlayed with faint sounds of conversation from the driver's
cab. It's a truck, I decide, and it's going to arrive here in less than half a minute. It looks like my
wait is over. I check my chronograph again. It's been all of half an hour since I left the station.
The truck rumbles into view, spurting dusty blue fumes into the humid air. It's quite bulky, and
looks very inefficient -- a huge engine cowling looms over great disc-wheels, a smokestack twice
as high again protruding above it. It's dragging a wagon train on wheels, six creaking wooden
trailers with sealed sides and roofs with small ventilation ducts on top. The whole thing is
travelling not much faster than a brisk marching pace. Little nut-brown men and women with
black hair cling to the sides; they're naked but for loin-cloths and all of them are carrying guns.
As it trundles past my hiding-place, I see into the cab; a sweaty figure is shovelling something
black into a furnace, and another man stands guard with rifle raised. It might be a trading
caravan, but knowing what the Boss told me about Year Zero syndrome I doubt this. The
squealing of axles and rattling of chains and pistons drowns out any noise from inside the sealed
wagons.
It's so big that it takes a minute to pass my hiding place, and in that time I count eight guards. The
only efficient-looking things in the whole convoy are their guns; black, polished, functional. The
soldiers have that thousand yard stare, peering into the jungle with fingers loosely wrapped
around the triggers of their weapons. I've seen that casual, sprawled-out pose among troops
before, lying prone on their trailers or clinging to handholds with the gun half-slung in the crook
of an arm. Don't be fooled: they're not laid-back. They can tear you up faster than the eye can see.
I wait until the last wagon has rumbled by, then I scramble on hands and knees to the edge of the
road and peer after it. They missed the wingsail -- not surprising, even I can barely see its
corroded wreckage and I know where to look -- and the tail guards aren't looking particularly
closely at the side of the road. They seem to be looking at the sky: I squeeze my eyes shut and
pay attention to the microwave sidebands. The webs of phased-array receiver cells implanted at
the back of my eyes go to work. The world goes a dim fuzzy orange, and I can see through trees:
the sky is a sodium-lit hell paraded by aurorae. But there's no sweep radar! I remember the guns.
The projectiles they shoot are unguided, judging by the lack of sights. Do these people even have
radar?
I hear a buzzing from the sky as I wait for the convoy to pass out of view. I itch in the damp heat,
and the insects are trying to bite my face. This planet's been terraformed too well for my liking. I
swat them away, watching the trail of reddish dust and blue smoke diminishing into the distance
as I listen: what now?