"Paul Di Filippo - Shipbreaker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

From the crowd ascended a lusty cheer. Here was work aplenty for the next several months. Fat
profits, to be sure, for the Shipyard's ownerтАФthe enigmatic and seldom-glimpsed Horseface known as
Bright Tide RisingтАФbut enough scraps, at least, to sustain the meager lives of the breakers themselves.

And, as always, the dreamтАФ

Perhaps one of the breakers would even strike it rich, finding something onboard that earned its
discoverer a bonus. Hefty by comparison with the regular day rates, these incentive payments
represented the smallest fraction of what Bright Tide Rising would resell the prizes for.

But the breakers were in no position to bargain or complain.



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Klom turned to the woman at his side. Sorrel's marigold face was sheened with salty spray blown back
from the collision of tide and baffles, and her auburn hair was damp. A smear of neglected grease grimed
one hinge of her jaw; scavenged O-rings served her as bracelets, and a unredeemable chunk of fused
gold circuitry spotwelded to a clasp hung from one small earlobe.

Klom lifted a blunt-fingered hand big enough to palm Sorrel's head like a gameball. The back of his
hand was tessellated with the latest cruft, a mica-like substance that evolved out of Klom's epidermal
cells and flaked off regularly. The cruft had come in on the Snuffler ship they had dismantled some
months ago, and as yet the Yard's curanderos had no remedy for the exogenous affliction. With a
forefinger large as the nozzle of a watercutter, Klom swiped moisture from the skin underneath Sorrel's
green, horizontally slitted left eye and down over her sharp cheekbone.

"You got wet."

Sorrel glared up at Klom, who towered above her much as the floating ship now towered over the
crowd, even at the remove of a kilometer. Her throaty voice registered exasperation. "Big news, you
dumb two-strand! We all did."

"Oh." Klom raised the hem of his tattered coarse shirt, revealing a midriff packed with muscle and
striated with more cruft. He dried his own rugged face. "I didn't even feel the spray. I was busy thinking
about my mother."

Sorrel snorted. "Your mother! You haven't even seen the woman in ten years. I'm sure she would
have forgotten that you even exist, if it weren't for the money you send."

"Maybe this ship will make us rich, Sorrel. Enough for you and me and my mother too. We could go
back to my village and all three of us could live together. You'd like living in Chaulk, I know it. There's a
lake thereтАФ"

"Oh, my deva! I've heard about Lake Zawinul so often I'm starting to develop gills! And what makes
you think I'd go with you to your stinking little home village even if you were rich? I used to be a city girl,
you know, before I had the misfortune to end up here. Can Chaulk compete with the Whispering