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

them all. Nobody needs anything тАУ the die-backs left a vast overcapacity. The city's a
playground for the boys so nobody lives there anymore."
He shoveled in another handful of food without looking up. "You came at the wrong
time."
Nike watched him silently for a while, fascinated. She wondered if she'd met him
before, years ago; so many of her memories from the early days had been wiped to make
room for new experiences that she couldn't be sure.
He finished eating and finally looked up. "Just what did you come here for, anway?"
he asked with an elaborate shrug.
"To take over," she said. "We need this space. What's your interest?"
He grinned, face in a shadow cast by the sunduct in the roof. "I'm a neutral. I have no
interest in conflict."
"So?" she asked.
"The question is what you can do for us," he added. "Who you are."
Her eyes flashed, reflecting the night with mirrored venom. "I'm the forerunner. My
people are coming and they need a vacant biosphere. Don't stand in our way!"
"I'm not," he remonstrated mildly; "I just want to know who you are. I'm not opposing
you! But the boys probably will. And the Shogun might."
"Yes," she said. "But just what are these boys? And who is the Shogun?"
He raised an eyebrow. "That," he replied, "is something I expected you to know
already."

The Hunter stared at the screen until the pain in her eyes forced her to blink furiously,
tears trickling down her cheeks. It was hard to bear, this sense of her humanity being
reduced to a cypher by isolation. The feeling that she'd been locked in her role for too long
while the boys played their blood-games in the forest. Sometimes she sent out for a warm
skull to scan for the wet sensations of dying; she couldn't remember her name but she felt
that if she concentrated on it for long enough it would return... she was close to an overload
with time. It had been too many years since she had been merely human. Damn, damn, she
whispered to herself in a monotonous litany; why do I keep forgetting what it was like? There
was no answer; there never was.
All she knew was that she couldn't get a grip on her emotions. There'd been a time,
not so long ago in historical terms, when she had possessed a blindingly important purpose
for which she had sacrificed her freedom to be anyone but herself. The purpose might have
been connected with the Shogun or the boys; it had faded into the cobwebs of neurones that
died and were replaced by the longevity programs. To those who knew the signs she was as
old as the artificial hills. She knew that it had meant everything to her once: but now it was
merely the voice from behind her throne, and the boys.

Three short grey cylinders the size of mice drifted in free fall, jostling in the thin
breeze along the axis of the world. One of them was capped at each end by a blue, very
human eye. Another sprouted two surreal ears, perfect fleshy miniatures that merged
seamlessly with the cylinder. The third had no discernable sense organs, but from a crack in
its flank grew an almost perfect stem of convolvulus. The bindweed curled and twisted,
loosely holding the other two cylinders in its green coils. A wasp coasted nearby, red-banded
and bearing stenciled cyrillic insignia on its wings; five kilometers below, the cotton-wool
swathes of cloud veiled the floor of the world. Valentin Zero had smuggled his cortex modules
into the shogunate as seeds disguised in Nike's gut. Reaching the free-fall zone via the
sewage system, the modules had matured and grown rapidly by preying on wind-born
organisms; the wasp was one of many infiltrators sweeping the world for news.