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

margin, where the ship made a profit or did not. Had her substance not been itself a valuable commodity,
The River would never have lasted as long as she did. Like a whore, she sold bits and pieces of herself at
every port of call to make up the difference, and so every year she became less and less what she once
had been. Consequently, travel through the main deck often led to dark and deserted regions, down
corridors that led nowhere, past rooms empty and abandoned.

On this day, when the husk of Evan Hand was to be vaporized and his ions sprayed into the void,
Fransziska Wong sought refuge among the shadows and forgotten memories of the G-ring. She found a
room far out from the central core and there became very, very drunk. In this selfsame room, legend
said, microtech mogul Gowery Bend had deflowered the American president during that infamous
elopement. But that had been during the luxury years, when this entire room had been dedicated to the
pampering of a single passenger and few, even among presidents, prized duty above pleasure. Nothing
now remained of that era. There was a single relic of the more austere times that followed: A skeletal
rack upon which desperate men and women had been carried dreaming off to Mars. Perhaps they too
had been looking for high adventure and the sight of far, exotic places. If so, the doctor thought, they too
had been fools.

She wrapped one, long leg around a support strut of the rack and folded herself into a half-lotus. Then
she zipped her coverall partway open and pulled out the inhaler fixed by a neck strap between her
breasts. She popped the cap on the inhaler and squeezed a pure aerosol into her waiting lungsтАФa blend
of drugs and chemicals of her own concoction, a blend delivering dreams, delivering oblivion, delivering
release.

The mistтАФshe had no name for it; a name would make it too realтАФhit like a tsunami in her blood. She
was borne away on its fury: smashed, drowned, lifted up, glorified, no more miserably huddled in an
abandoned stateroom in a tawdry ship, but soaring through the endless night, transported on its frothing
crest. She was as tall as Alice, larger indeed thanThe River of Stars itself, and could ponder that aged
and ungainly craft from godlike altitudes. A flick of her finger could send it, with its infestation of
people, spinning like a discus across the solar system. And yet, she would not, for she loved them all and
yearned to bind their hurts.


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She would, someday; she would save them all. There would be a disasterтАФshe was not sure what, but
her eyes saw a distant explosion or a collisionтАФand she would guide them all to safety. Or perhaps it
would be an epidemic. Perhaps the same illness that had taken Captain Hand would return, more
virulent, to finish the job. And Wong would labor sleepless nights to find the cure, preparing compounds
and simples and programming microbots, and would with her own last gasp inject the saving medicine
into each of the stricken crew, and she would be loved then in death more than she had ever been in life.

Clever chemicals mimicked ghostly caresses, the warmth of phantom kisses, the massage of unseen
fingers. Goosebumps rippled as, gulled, enzymes spurted from their enclosures. Warmth enveloped her;
wetness seeped from the walls of her body. She wept at touches never granted, at entries never sought.
Light touches, urgent touches, touches deep inside her being. Oh, what a grand ride she had, had she
only a rider!

There had been that boy in school in Goddard, gangly and awkward with his spurting limbs and cracking