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

Burly Marko beamed approval. "It gives you the four-day hangover," he declared,
as if this was a particular recommendation. "I buy a glass for you."

"I don't think I want a four-day hangover," I demured. "What's in the stuff?"

"It's a mixture of licorice, aniseed, and ammonium chloride. Powerful!"

They all looked at me. Would I wimp out.? Evidently I had been set up for a
dare.

Okay, so I would try a small glass, please.

Marko vanished in the direction of the bar, and returned promptly with a liqueur
glass holding four inches of brown fluid.

The liquid smelled exactly like the foulest cough medicine. My Finnish friends
regarded me gloatingly as I sipped. The taste exactly matched the smell, and I
chased those awful sips down with gulps of beer.

"After a while," Marko said sagely, "you won't notice the taste."

This proved to be semi-true. True and not-true, at once- quite like a beryllium
ion being hit by laser light at just the right frequency so that the spin of one
of its electrons would be "up" and "down" at the very same time. Superposition
of states, as we say in the trade. The key to a quantum logic gate.

I was trying to get rid of the concoction so as to prove my mettle, swilling
each gulp down with a dollop of the beer- when one of those endearing drunks who
sometimes fixate on a foreigner in a bar made his appearance, attracted by the
fact that we were all speaking English. This balding middle-aged man with
twinkly blue eyes slipped into a vacant seat.

So I was American? So how did I like the Finnish winter? So what was I doing
here?

"She's a secret agent," Outi told him wickedly.

This was not quite true. Though it wasn't exactly untrue, either.

"Do you have a gun?" asked the drunk. Everyone chuckled when I shook my head.

Obviously some real secret agents were attached to the U.S. embassy in Helsinki,
though since the collapse of Communism Finland's strategic importance had
dwindled, as alas had its economy, with soup kitchens helping out in the
capital.

"I'm a Secret Service agent," I found myself explaining, a little tipsily. There
was no harm in this revelation, since what I was doing wasn't covert at all.

"Bang bang," said the drunk. "Save the President!"