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

The buzzing gets louder. I peep for radar again but nobody's scanning, so I raise my head for an
eyeball search; I see a dragonfly through the tangled branches, a dragonfly the size of the engine
at the head of the road train. Shit! I hug the nearest tree trunk. One look tells all. The plane is
primitive -- rotary airscrews and guy lines to hold the wings taut. Not so far advanced over the
coal-burning crew up ahead. Speaking of whom --
Well, yes. I hear the crackle of small arms fire from the convoy. They're shooting at the
dragonflyer, assault rifles against piston power. Quaint but deadly. That explains the look-outs. I
squat, pull up the hood of my jumpsuit, then roll it right down across my forehead. I fasten it tight
and adjust the eye-patches so I can see, then I pull on my gloves. Thunder rumbles off the baking
road surface ahead. There's a switch in my right palm, and when I trigger it my hand shimmers
and slowly dissolves into cyanic chaos against the vegetation. Wrapped head to foot in this suit
I'm a chameleon: it's not a cloak of invisibility, exactly, but the next best thing. I step onto the
road and jog towards the column of smoke. Which is no longer blue and ochre and dry, but black
and oily and hot.
By the time I get close enough to see the wreckage the dragonflyer is long gone, vanished into the
hazy skies like a lethal mirage. The smoke is dense, billowing in clouds from flames that lick
eagerly at the engine and front carriage. The road train has jack-knifed into the trees that line the
edge of the road. Two of the rear trailers are overturned. A thin keening noise rises from them,
grating on my nerves; the sound of many voices crying out in fear. I know what's in them now,
and why the pilot of the dragonflyer would strafe her own people on their transport to oblivion.
About a hundred metres from the wreckage I pass the first corpse. She's lying in a pool of her
own blood, thrown there by the force of the blast. The flyer only carried small bombs: anything
bigger would have annihilated the entire convoy. The fire is spreading fast so I don't bother
looking too closely at the body -- I've got more important things to do.
Someone's moving up ahead. I trot forward, passing a puddle of burning oil here and a mass of
crumpled metal there. One of the trailers has burst open, spilling human flesh like a twist of
corruption across the pristine chaos of the jungle. Some of the flesh is moving. I jog past them: a
mass of men and women, all naked and bloody, shaven scalps weirdly pale above their tanned
bodies. Those who can crawl, crawl; those who can stand, stand. Their hands are upraised, and
some of them appear to be looking up, searching for the signs of deliverance: but that's wrong, as
I see when I get closer. My stomach gives an odd lurch, something I thought I'd gotten over long
ago; The Year Zero Men responsible for this atrocity are nothing if not efficient.
All of them have recently had their eyes gouged out.
The bodies of the dead guards lie strewn around the sides of the road. Some of them lie like
broken puppets, their limbs bent at odd angles, while others look perfectly healthy. A few have
skin the consistency of a pulpy, rotten fruit, and tongues that bulge and glisten gruesomely.
Hydrostatic shock kills in a myriad of ways, all of them final but some of them uglier than others.
Listening in on the high frequency cellcom bands I can hear a raucous twittering, neural mapping
data being uploaded into the invisible, omnipresent Dreamtime. At a conservative estimate, the
convoy consisted of twelve guards ferrying five hundred prisoners; less than fifty will survive the
wreck, and all will die before they reach civilisation. Which is a small mercy, I suppose, because
those who reach what passes for civilisation on this planet will only take longer to die.
I spot what I'm looking for and give the escaping prisoners a wide berth as I sprint towards the
head of the train. One of the guards there has been thrown clear. On infrared I can see the pulse in
her throat, the warm breath rising unevenly from her mouth. If I can get to her before the
prisoners stumble this far I may have a chance to save her.
First aid crowds out the questions that clamour in the shadows of my mind as I bend over the
guard. She's still breathing raggedly, and appears to be unconscious, but I give her a quick scan
with my eyes on active and she doesn't seem to have any broken bones. Possible concussion,
then, and maybe some internal bleeding. Well, there's nothing I can do about that. She's almost as