"Charles Stross - Tarkovsky's Cut" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Jewel withdraws from the play of images, and clasps her hands. Conciously now, she draws
from these erotic images the shapes and movements of Marget's body, the relative suppleness of
each limb in each plane. When she is finished she knows how to kill her.

She knows the poise to adopt, the angle to hit, the force necessary for the blow, and the speed
of the strike. This is the Second House.

Warmed by the drugged coffee, she unclenches her hands. The bright morning sunlight casts
shadows of her fingers onto the table beneath. She waves her fingers and the light threads over
the table. The movement of light and shade is erotic. She enters the Third House, and reads
violence into the movements of the shadows. Violence and sexuality fuse in a single, simple
rhythm.

Her breasts engorge.

The Census is over by evening. The stench of molten insulation drifts across the street from the
Recidivist's nest. By Three tomorrow morning, all subversives will be retrodden. The managing
director of the census, Harvey Mishima is in a teleconference with other officers of the Census.
His fellows appear behind his eyes, faces black with ash and hands sticky with housejuice. They
all have exactly the same smile.

"Report by numbers," Harvey drawls. He lifts up his legs and rests his feet comfortably on the
bar table. Harvey Mishima is a middle-aged retread who has been programmed to think that all
Recidivists should be recycled. His number two sits next to him, convinced that in some previous
incarnation she was Eva Braun. She likes killing ragheads.

A bartender mixes cocktails and twitches his whiskers nervously: Eva Braun is field-stripping
her gun.

Two. Seven subjects in the block, now cared for.

Three. None in the block, but we found a sewer rat.

The bartender twitches its whiskers in terror.

Four grunts and howls and masturbates in front of the camera. Semantic engines do their best
to draw meaning from the display. Four is a psychopath on test-release from the Domino Factory.
He's killed as many beastmen as Recidivists.

Five. None in the block. Tried to link with six but got whitenoise.

Six. A practical knowledge of nursing the elderly is essential, but not necessarily gained in the
private sector.

Harvey's Wisdom tries making sense of the whitenoise where six should be. Harvey turns it off
and spits. He calls up Cleansing, using his Wisdom to port a description of Six to them.

No dice. He turns to Eva. "Six is out -- alive and missing."