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

The building shivers in sympathy with Alia's anger. It detatches its proboscis from the street
artery and stands up. Alia soothes the house; she thinks of trees, solidly rooted. She looks at
Mishima, at the braindrain, clamped leech-like to his face. The house responds to her fierce
satisfaction and squats back down with a jarring bump.

This is going to take a long time.

The braindrain starts eating Harvey's face -- a desperate and, ultimately, futile attempt to
assuage its massive metapbolic demnds. Alia does not look at him as she interrogates him. It is
bad enough having to listen to his whistling voice without having to watch his face go bloody.

"Why the Census?"

"Because," Harvey wheezes. The air is escaping through ragged holes in his cheeks. Alia calls
up her Wisdom and handshakes Harvey's semantic engine. She scrolls through the icons behind
her eyes and selects the kinds of functions she needs. In a minute or two Harvey won't have a
mouth. He can talk to her via her Wisdom, instead.

We suspect an offensive. We are suppressing Recidivist groups in the area. When the big one
comes down we don't want to have to burn the Suburb.

It takes an hour to get names, dates, faces and all the other paraphernalia the Team needs to
plan Jewel's assassination. Alia glances surreptitiously at Mishima. His hair is gone. His skull
glitters pink and white like candy in the pale-blue light. His eyes are full of purple wormy things.
Alia looks away, fast. "Who were you? Before the retread?"

This time Mishima can answer. The parts of his mind sealed by the retread process have
escaped and are establishing new dendritic architectures within the braindrain itself. Whoever
Mishima was is being reborn inside the drain.

Hello, Alia.
 Mishima has no eyes now: whoever it was who had inhabited him must have recognised her
from her Wisdom handshake.

"You're a Cube," she says. Her words are random -- noises she makes to give her time to think.
Someone who knew her. Someone close├Ф...

@italic(Fourth lifetime.)

"When were you retrodden?"

Eighty years ago. Third lifetime.

Alia nods. Of course. Of course. She closes her eyes.

How long have I got?

Alia calls up her Wisdom. With a sick twist in her stomach, Alia remembers that Wisdom
wetware is made of diced braindrain.