"Charles Stross - The Boys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

She ground to a halt, thoughtfully, remembering what it had been like when she had
been here before. A modified wasp buzzed to a six-point landing on her left arm, abdomen
curved to inject. Its lance slid out and penetrated her skin, extending feathery biosensors into
her peripheral circulation.
"Spying again, Valentin?" She opened her eyes and looked at the wasp. Its metallic
carapace shone with black and red stripes, tiny alphanumerics embossed on its wings.
"I can never tell what you're thinking," said the program. "It makes me nervous."
Nike tried an experimental grin, her face twisting into a semblance of spontaneity.
 "When you go like that," complained Valentin. "you're unreadable."
"If I do go," she said, "do you think I should continually signal my intentions with my
anatomy?" This time the facial expression was more natural; heavy irony. Her face resembled
her body; slim, pared-down, designed for an abstract aesthetic of speed rather than comfort.
And she was obviously not at home in it.
"You ported into that brain badly if you think you can convince anyone you're human;
you don't look spontaneous enough. You don't have to tell everyone what you're going to do;
just make them think they know!"
She snorted. "How long is it since you were last human, Valentin?"
The pilot sounded genuinely surprised. "Me, human? What do you take me for? A
potential defector?"
The wasp picked up traces of subtle neuropeptides that warned of danger. "Don't be
alarmed," she said, "but if I thought that, I'd have to suspend you. I need you here behind
me." Mirrors slid down across her eyeballs, a deliberate snub to conversation. The wasp took
wing in a vindictive whine of chitin, leaving a bead of blood oozing from her skin. It flew to a
nearby neuroplant with yellow tendrils as fat as fingers that dug their way into the hull of the
pod, and offered biochemical homage.
"I've made up my mind," she said. "I'm going."
Valentin didn't reply. There was a gentle thumping from outside the pod, followed by
the barely perceptible return of acceleration, unfelt for six weeks; the tug had latched on.
Nike returned to her customs video briefing.
"If we accept your application for citizenship you must accept our semiotics. If we
accept your physiology you must accept our commensal bacteria. If we accept your
psychodynamics you must accept our law."
The customs official stared at her with phased-array eyes, cruciform wings of black
synthetic retinae. It was a robot, and not a well-maintained robot: it recited by rote, sounding
extremely bored.
"Repeat after me: Death to the imperialist zionist ronin, the lackeys of neo-humanist
cladisticians, and the discorporeate running-dog zaibatsu. I swear to follow the decree of the
hezbollah and the shogunate in all things, to abide by the shari'a, to follow humility and
modesty as a law for the rest of my natural life, and to refrain from acts of treason against the
corporation ..."
Nike recited the oath expressionlessly, word-perfect from memory. The syllables
were stale in her mouth; she'd memorized them during the two-day immigration check,
startled at how far the original slogans had been deformed. Then she walked through the exit
of the customs hall, feeling her feet ache from months of free-fall. The black cross of the
robots' retinal array tracked her as far as the path into the forest before losing interest and
swiveling back to the entry gates.
Mist swirling at ankle-level obscured roots that looped to catch unwary feet, pits of
rotting vegetation hollowed out by subsidence, other unseen hazards. Videomice crouched in
the boles of trees, grooming their paws, faces almost obscured by the black buttons of their
eyes. Nike walked without guidance into the woods that blanketed the colony interior. There