"Michael Flynn - Wreck of The Rivers of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flynn Michael)

who had supervised the ship during its Jovian service.

Such gaffes might betoken a lurking malf in the neural net. Gorgas downloaded the list to the attention
of The Lotus Jewel.

He glanced around the hall to see if the sysop had entered while he had been occupied with his тАЩputer.
Of all the crew, The Lotus Jewel was the most pleasant to the eyes. Cheerful, intense, a good team
player in GorgasтАЩs judgment. He was disappointed, though not surprised, to note her continued absence.
Like so many of her unworldly kind, she was undoubtedly floating in her room with her head up her ass.




Gorgas was not quite correct about The Lotus Jewel, at least about which was up what. She was in the
communications center just off the bridge. The main panel of the transmitter was open and fasteners and
random objects floated about, so that the console seemed to have been frozen somehow in the midst of
an explosion. Her hands were deep within the unit, like a surgeon fumbling for a spleen; and if her head
was not entirely up inside as well, her face was close to it and bore a look of profound concentration.

Passing by (and passing by no coincidence), Corrigan glanced into the comm center and saw the
disorder. Corrigan did not approve of clutter. Yet, his rebuke remained unspoken, because he did
approve of The Lotus Jewel. He approved of her face (it was fine and broad, with high cheekbones, and
eyes of a most peculiar blue) and he approved of her poise, which always seemed to him graceful, as if
she were acutely aware of where each and every part of her body was in relation to the rest. He approved
of her ass, which at the moment faced in his direction and so demanded his attention. And he certainly
approved of her generous and loving nature, since he was the immediate and primary beneficiary of it.

It pleased him that the most exquisite creature on the ship was lover to тАЩAbd al-Aziz Corrigan, a man
whose visage blanched the faces of so many wellsprung humans. That the carnal pickings on boardThe
River might be slim he knew intellectually. Gorgas was too pompous, Grubb too virginal, Ratline too
old, the wranglers too young, and Bhatterji too whatever Bhatterji was, so The Lotus Jewel had few
options. Corrigan was not so naive as to suppose that no other pairings were possible, or that in the close
confines of a ship most of those combinations would not eventually be tried. Yet it was to him that this
delicate, golden-skinned wanton came.

Now, the spaceborn could be as graceful and (in their way) as beautiful as any wellsprung. They were
filigrees; they were the intricate, twisting vines of medieval illuminations. Those raised deep within the
gravity wells of Earth or MarsтАФor even of LunaтАФcould seem lumpish by comparison. By rights, it
ought to have been the doctor who enchanted the Second. They were two of a kind. But Corrigan found
his own kind ungainly and ugly and lusted after the standard of beauty of another time and place.

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 TheWreckofTheRiverofStars



(Besides, Corrigan was a man of the asteroids while Wong had grown up in Low Earth Orbit and they
might not even reckon each other as тАЬa kind.тАЭ Safe within the embrace of EarthтАЩs magnetic field, Wong
had never found the need for skin enhancers. Yet, such fine distinctions were lost on the likes of
Bhatterji or Gorgas or even the otherwise perceptive Lotus Jewel. A snake was a snake. Not that there