"Borovsky's Hollow Woman by Jeff DSuntemann & Nancy Kress" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dsuntemann Jeff & Kress)

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BOROVSKY'S HOLLOW WOMAN
By Jeff Duntemann and Nancy Kress
Laura walked the Low Steel above the stars, searching for her man.
It was 2.3 klicks across the skeletal terrain by the most direct route-the blue line on the diagram of the construction zone burned in the eye of Laura's mind. No one but Mikhail Borovsky would take that particular route across the unfinished girders of the titan cylinder's outermost level, and even-he would not take it without her.
One foot before the other, lift, swing, step. The pilot beam was solid monocrystal steel, I-section, one decimeter wide. One hundred meters to her left and right identical girders glittered in the always-changing light. They were the primary structural support of the latest, lowest level of George Eastman Nexus. Each girder was a single crystal of iron atoms, one hundred nineteen kilometers in circumference, and strong enough to rest an artificial world on.
For a kilometer ahead and behind, it was Laura and her beam.
A man in the saddle of a six-wheeled yoyo swung under the horizon far away antispinward and quickly approached her, soon passing to the rear and vanishing. Borovsky's yoyo was a four-wheeler. The earth swung up behind her and made blue highlights creep across the dull gray steel plates ten meters above her helmet. It slipped above the horizon and was gone again for another forty minutes.
Laura adjusted the magnetism in her boot soles. Just enough to add a little friction, a little sureness. If she fell outward from the rotating structure into the starry darkness the steelworkers called the Pit, no one would fall after to her rescue. But she would not fall. Steel was her medium, just as it was Borovsky's, and she loved it. Steel was sure and clean and true. It could be trusted, as Borovsky could be trusted when he wasn't-
No. She would not allow that thought to be completed.
Where had they gone? Borovsky, in rubber underwear, off on a yoyo to fight a man twice his size, somewhere on a level swinging more than 1.6 g. Falling on your face could flatten your skull on E Minus Seven. Fighting could dock you a week's pay. Ignoring a challenge could get you called a phobe. A coward. A . . . woman.
Where?
Step following step, body bent forward, using the artificial gravity to help carry her onward, Laura searched. She scanned the chatter on the CB and the bloody-murder band. Nothing spoke of a man in rubber hurt on E Minus Seven.
Less than five hundred meters of open steel remained. Far ahead Laura saw something streak through the shadows toward the sucking stars. She followed desperately with her eyes and saw it catch the sun beyond the great cylinder's shadow. Four-wheeled gantry, cable, saddle: It blazed brilliant yellow for a moment and was gone, falling forever.
His yoyo, unridden, alone. Damn the Pit! Laura broke into a run, each boot hitting the beam safely though without thought, each magnet grabbing just so much. Raw dawn broke behind her and cast lurching shadows against the unfinished steel ahead. The sun was beneath her feet as she stepped from naked monocrystal onto gray steel plates.
Above was the port from which the yoyo had fallen. She pulled herself up a ladder and stepped out onto E Minus Six. A little lighter, a little less deadly.
No sign of fleeing men. Six was a big level, one hundred meters thick. Heavy chemical industry, she remembered.
Before her a dozen huge steel tanks squatted against the floor like brooding hens. Each was ten meters high, with a ladder leading to a dogged circular hatch.
She scanned the tanks. All were alike, save that one of the hatches had dog-handles twisted differently from the rest. In moments she was at the hatch, pushing the dogs aside.
The tube was a simple pressure lock. Laura pulled herself in, dogged the outer hatch, and released the inner.
With a rising rush there was sound all around her. She pushed the inner hatch wide and found her man.
Mikhail Borovsky lay naked in a heap, blood leaking from his mouth. Laura cried out, and for an awful moment she lay immobile in the tube until she heard a rattling breath. She slid to his side and squeezed his wrist until her gauntlet felt his pulse. Drugs-he needed drugs to stir his system out of shock.
His rubber suit lay on the floor. Laura kicked it scorn-
fully aside, reached to her throat, and undid its latch. Quickly she eased her helmet back. She pulled her ventral zipper down, flipping the hooks aside with her fingers as they went. Eagerly she spread her ventral plates apart, pulled her pelvic plate forward, then pulled the zippers down each of her legs almost to each knee.
She lay on her back beside him, plates gaping, helmet folded under. The eyes in her wrists and in the toes of her boots helped her lift Borovsky above her. Gently she eased his legs down into her legs and let the slow peristalsis of her inner layers draw his feet into her feet. Her ventral plates stretched wide to clear his hips. She placed the Texas catheter over his penis and pulled her pelvic plate back into position.
Wriggling slightly, she guided his arms down into her arms, where her inner layers did the final positioning.
Each finger was drawn into place and continuously massaged. Laura zipped and hooked her ventral plates and finally eased her helmet over his head.
For a Rabinowicz Manplifier Mark IX space suit, walking steel empty was too lonely to bear. Without her man inside her Laura felt herself a hollow mockery, less than even a woman, not worthy of the soul Borovsky had paid so much for. Never again, she said to unconscious ears. Never again. Stay inside me. You are mine.
Slowly she stood, whole again. Up from his toes the hydraulic rings pressed in smooth waves, helping his blood back toward his head and heart. A tiny needle jabbed into his buttocks, sending a careful measure of stimulant into his bloodstream.
This was no place to be caught by a boss. Laura moved slowly as she climbed from the tank. It had been some time since she had carried his dead weight asleep, and never unconscious. She gave the torn rubber underwear to
the Pit with a vengeful flick of her hand.
They went home the long way, going up through Six to Five and walking slowly. Halfway there he came around.
"Laura," he whispered.
"I love you," she said, without breaking her stride.
"He had a metal bar shoved up his ass," he said, and coughed. "Crapped it out on the floor, grabbed it, and that was that. I'm gonna kill the fugger. You watch me."
"I love you," she said again, hoping against knowledge that the words would soothe the murderous rage she feared might get him killed.
A world without Borovsky-
"Love you too," he mumbled, only half-conscious. "I'm gonna kill him."
By morning the bruises showed up. Borovsky swore at his image in the mirror. The left half of his face was swollen grotesquely. Ugly purple blotches covered most of his cheek and curved up nearly to surround his left eye. All across his body were bruises and scrapes from hitting the iron going down. He pressed a bruise with one finger and jerked the finger away from the fiery pain.
Laura watched, unmoving. The tiny, cylindrical pod with its watercot, its kitchen, its shower, and squat toilet was very silent. If Borovsky fought again, if he insisted on fighting again today-
Panic appeared in her crystalline, layered machine mind, seeping outward from the F layer at the core. Layers A through E were standard Manplifier equipment: sensory, motor, communications, memory, and intellect. Borovsky had paid three years' wages for the F layer that Laura so cherished: unique, personal, precious-her soul. The E layer, shared by any machine that could speak and
reason, could have stopped the panic, but it did not. Instead, when Laura could no longer stand the way he stood gripping the edge of the sink in furious silence, she spoke.
"You didn't have to go fight him."
He spat into the sink. "He called me a phobe. Maybe once I can take it. Maybe twice. Some people have to make noise. But he made me answer him. So I answered." He probed a bruise on his thigh, wincing. "What do we got for bruises?"
Laura turned and searched a small cabinet beside the bed. "Hemoverithol."
"Let's have it."
Laura pressed an autoampul against his thigh and squeezed.