Read Online Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow - Free Book Online Page B

diamond-walled chamber fogs and hums. The mandibles recede and Huw sits up. A ventilation system kicks in, clearing the fog from the chamber, and there Huw sees his cloned hand taking shape, starting as a fetal fin, sundering into fingers, bones lengthening, proto-fingernails forming. “That’ll take a couple hours to ripen,” the hacker says. “Then I’ll implant it and we’ll see what happens. Come back this time tomorrow, I’ll show you what turns up.” She rubs her thumbs against her forefingers.
    Huw sticks his hand out to touch hers and interface their PANs so he can transfer a payment to her, but she shies back. “I don’t think so,” she says. “You’re infectious, remember?”
    “Well, how shall I pay you, then?” he says.
    “Over there,” she says, gesturing at a meatpuppet in the corner, a wrinkled naked neuter body with no head, just a welter of ramified tubules joined to a bare medulla that flops out of the neck stump like an alien nosegay. Huw shakes the currency zombie’s clammy hand and interfaces with its PAN, transfers a wad of baksheesh to it, and steps back, wiping his hand on the seat of his track pants afterwards.
    “This time tomorrow, right?” the hacker says.
    “See you then,” Huw says.
----
    Back at the courthouse, the People’s Second Revolutionary Technology Court Guardsman doesn’t even blink as Huw unrolls the multiple thicknesses of burka he’d wrapped around his telltale hand—which is starting to itch like it’s acrawl with subcutaneous fire ants—and forearm.
    As he steps into the gloomy courtroom, he thinks that he’s alone: but after that moment he detects movement and slurping sounds from the shadows behind one of the benches. A familiar head with a blue forelock rears back, face a rictus of agonized enjoyment. Huw makes out a female head suctioned to the joe’s chest, teeth fastened to his nipple.
Christ,
Huw thinks,
he and Sandra are having a snog in the fucking courtroom. The Vulture’s going to string them up by their pubes and skull-fuck them with her gavel
.
    Then the head turns, worrying at the nipple in a way that looks painful (though it appears to be doing wonders for the joe) and Huw sees that it isn’t Sandra Lal masticating that tit; it’s Doc Dagbjört. He feels a sear of jealousy jetting from his asshole to his shoulder blades, though whom he is jealous of he cannot exactly say. He clears his throat.
    The lovebirds spring apart and stand. Doc Dagbjört’s shirt is hiked up around her armpits and before she gets it pulled back down, Huw is treated to a stunning display of her chestular appendages, which are rather spectacular in a showy, fantastically perfect way. The joe is more casual, stretches and yawns and pulls his own sweaty leather shirt down. Then he does a double take as he recognizes Huw.
    “You!” he says. “The hell are you doing here?”
    “You know him?” Dagbjört asks. She’s blushing a rather lovely and fierce Viking red.
    Huw partially unrolls his burka from his arm and dangles it in front of his face. “So do you, Doc,” he says.
    “The transvestite?” she says.
    “I’m not a tranny,” Huw says. He rewraps the burka around his arm, which is throbbing with itch and needles of alternating ice and fire. “Just got a nasty little itch and took a while to figure out who to bribe.” He glares at the guy with the blue forelock, Bonnie the party animal. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it, would you?”
    “Who, me?” Bonnie frowns right back at him. “What did you think you were doing barging in here, anyway?”
    Huw crosses his arms defensively. “In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a courtroom and the Vulture’s going to be back in about—”
    The door bangs open behind him and he turns round. “Where
is
everybody?” croaks the black-clad judge. “Dammit, I expect punctuality in my courtroom!”
    Judge Giuliani crosses to her box and stands behind it, tapping her toe on the floor and