"Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow - Jury Service" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Huw holds the djinn's lamp up and hisses at it. "Right," he says. "Get me to the court on time."
"With the utmost of pleasures, sirrah," it begins. Huw gives it a sharp shake. "All right, then," it says. "Let me teach you to say, 'Out of my bloody
way,' and we'll be off."

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Huw doesn't know quite what to expect from the Fifth People's Technology Court. A yurt? Sandstone? Horrible modernist-brutalist white-
sheathed space-age pile?
As it turns out, it's an inflatable building, an outsized bounce-house made of metallic fabric and compressed air. The whole thing could be
deflated and carted elsewhere on a flatbed truck in a morning, or simply attached to a dirigible and lifted to a new spot. A great safety-yellow
rubbery gasket the size of a manhole cover sprouts from one side, hooked into power, bandwidth, sewage, and water, armored flex-hoses
coursing with modcons.
It's shaped like a casino-owner's idea of the Parthenon, cartoonish columns and squishy frescoes depicting mankind's dominance over
technology. Huw bounds up the rubbery steps and through the six-meter doors. A fourteen-year-old boy with a bad moustache confronts him as
he passes into the lobby.
"Pizzpot," grunts the kid, hefting a curare-blower in Huw's direction. Huw skids to a stop on the yielding floor.
"Pardon?"
"Pizzpot," repeats the boy. He's wearing some kind of uniform, yellow semi-disposable coveralls tailored like a potato-sack and all abristle with
insignia. It looks like the kind of thing that Biohazard Containment passes out when they quarantine a borough because it's dissolving into
brightly colored machine parts.
"The People's Revolutionary Technology Court Guardsman wishes to see your passport, sirrah," his djinn explains. "Court will be in session in
fifteen seconds."
Huw rolls up his sleeve and pressed his forearm against the grimy passport reader the Guardsman has pulled from his waistband. "Gaah. Show
me the way." A faint glowing trail appears in front of Huw, snaking down the hall and up to a battered-looking door.
Huw stumbles up to the door and leans on it. It opens easily, sucking him through with a gust of dusty air, and he staggers into a brightly lit
green room with a row of benches stretching round three walls. The center of the room is dominated by two boxes; a strangely menacing black
cube a meter on a side, and a lectern, behind which hunches a somewhat moth-eaten vulture in a black robe.
Faces turn to watch Huw as he stumbles to a halt. "You're late," squawks the vultureтАФon second thoughts, Huw realizes she's not an uplifted
avian, but a human being, wizened and twisted by age, her face dominated by a great hatchet of a nose.
"Terribly sorry," Huw pants apologetically. "Won't happen again."
"Better not." The judge harrumphed consumptively. "Dammit, I deserve some respect! Horrible children."
As the judge rants on about punctuality and the behavior of the dutiful and obedient juror (which, Huw is led to believe, had always been
deplorable but has been in terminal decline ever since the abolition of capital punishment for contempt of court back in the eighteenth century)
he takes stock of his fellow jurors. For the first time he has reason to be glad of his biohazard burkaтАФand its ability to completely obscure his
snarl of angerтАФbecause he knows at least half of them. The bastard pseudo-random number generators at the People's Magical Libyan
Jamahiriya embassy must be on the blink, because besides Doc Bj├╢rkтАФwhom he kind-of expectedтАФthe jury service has summoned none other
than Sandra Lal, and an ominously familiar guy with a blue forelock, and the irritating perpetually-drunk centenarian boomer from next door but
one. There are a couple of native Libyans, but it looks as if the perennially booming Tripolitanian economy has turned jury service evasion into a
national sport. Hence the need to import guest-jurors.
Fuck me, all I need is that turd Adrian to make it a clean sweep, thinks Huw. This must be some kind of set-up. He settles on a bench in a rustle
of static-charged fabric and waits for proceedings to begin.
The Vulture stands up and hunches over the lectern. "Listen up!" She rasps, in a forty-a-day voice that sounds like she's about due for another
pair of lungs. "I am doctor Rosa GiullianiтАФthat's a doctor of lawтАФand I have volunteered my services for the next two weeks to chair this court,
or focus group, or three-ring circus. You are the jury, or potential consumers, or performing animals. Procedurally the PMLJ have given me total
autonomy as long as I conduct this hearing in strict accordance within the bounds of international law as laid down by the Hague Tribunal on
Trans-Human Manifestations and Magic. Some of you may not fully comprehend what this means. What it means is that you are here to decide
whether a reasonable person would consider it safe to unleash Exhibit A on the world. If Exhibit A turns out to be a weapon of planetary
destruction, we will probably all die. If Exhibit A turns out to be a widget that brings everlasting happiness to the whole of humanity, we will
probably all get to benefit from the consequences. So I will enforce extreme measures against any rat-bastard who tries to smuggle a sample
out of this room. I will also nail to the wall the hide of anyone who talks about Exhibit A outside this room, because there are hardware