"Ian Watson - Caucus Winter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

What was that Swedish joke Outi had told me about the Finns' notion of a great
party game?

"Two Finns sit in a room with a crate of vodka, you see, Anne. When they finish
the vodka, one of them leaves the room. Then the other one tries to guess who
left!"

This witticism underlined a taciturn streak in the Finnish soul, which was not
much in evidence in the pub that night. All this darkness to contend with!
Apparently during the midsummer festival, when the sun is in the sky all night
long, the murder rate in Finland soars dramatically. That's when bottled-up
grievances get aired. Bright Night of the Long Knives.

Actually, Tampere in the first week of January was not continuously dark, as I
had imagined it would be. Here, a hundred miles northwest of Helsinki, for a
while around noon the sky was gray. And eerie. Smoke or steam wafted from
factory chimneys to mingle with chilly mist through which stray snowflakes
floated and flurried. It was as if this city was some alien metropolis on
another planet, as envisioned by Hollywood with clouds of dry ice vapor
everywhere.

The city had looked even more alien in 1918 with only chimneys left standing
after the Reds were suppressed. Tampere remained residually red enough to house
the world's only Lenin Museum. Outi had taken me there during a spare hour. Such
a well-lit, spotless, and strangely sad display. In these post-Soviet times she
and I had been the only visitors.

Outi's grandfather had fought in the seige of Tampere, on the losing side. Even
at school, years later during the Cold War, she had been taunted because of her
red connections. She was waylaid on her way home and beaten up a few times. This
was the reason for her tough punk appearance, her hair cropped short and
bleached white, with orange chevrons the color of dog pee on snow. Nokia
tolerated her hairstyle because she was such a fine mathematician and
programmer. Hers was the algorithm that would run on their quantum computer, so
that it would be able to decrypt any data within mere minutes; which of course
was why I was in Finland. Outi's algorithm was considered more powerful and
elegant than the pioneer one devised at AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey a while
ago.

I had hardly expected that my liaison person would be a pinko punk, but I like
Outi a lot. She was forthright and friendly.

Mischief surfaced after the first round of beers.

Outi asked me, "Have you drunk salmiakki?" I think that was the name. If not,
something similar. "It's the latest craze among young people."
Of course, at a mere twenty-nine years of age I didn't wish to be considered
fuddy-duddy.