"Gwyneth Jones - The Tomb Wife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Gwyneth)

тАЬWhatтАФ ?тАЭ

The alien raised his arms, spreading the webs between his slender
fingers, hooking the air with his claws. тАЬAnthropomorphizing. You called me
Batman.тАЭ

****

Elen suited up and visited the hold. The float tube delivered her to
darkness, where she drifted from one handhold to the next, following track
lights to the main cargo compartment. She flooded the great space with air
and pressure, touched down as gravity embraced her, took off her helmet,
passed through the lock, and walked into a cavern at the roots of a
sea-mount. The habitat a green, sunlit island far aboveтАФ

The artifacts were crated in force fields, but she couldnтАЩt adjust the
light above art-conservation level. Pedants, she murmured, marveling at the
dim, pixelated spectacle. The LarтАЩszтАЩ part of the collection was the most
impressive: so damned impressive you could almost justify the mad
expense of the shipping. The haunted tomb was huge, multistoried. It
caught her breath. She circled it slowly, calculating that their whole living
quarters would easily fit into the Tomb WifeтАЩs portico.

There was a single doorway, a black teardrop without a door: set
about two meters above ground level, amid a coruscation of carved and
inlaid stone. It would be a scramble to get inside. Perhaps the front steps
had been left behind, or there was a secret mechanism, something like
ancient Egypt. She sat cross-legged, slightly awkward in her suit, gazing.
Like most sailors of the strange ocean, she rarely got farther than the
dockside when she made landfall. Even if thereтАЩd been more time and less
bureaucracy she wouldnтАЩt have been tempted by a lightning tour of SigurtтАЩs
planet. What for? YouтАЩd see so little. YouтАЩd learn hardly anything.

SheтАЩd been interested in the cargo as a professional challenge, a
factor in her caculations. The science of transporting massive material
objects was in its infancy, and artwork was a nightmare! But here in the
gloom she felt the value of these things. A virtual LarтАЩszтАЩ tomb, freighted
through the transit in a courierтАЩs brain, downloaded into the digital
inventories of a limited-release of premier museums, could never have had
this presence. The Exhibition was going to be a revelation.

There was nothing to stop them from breaching the force fields for a
preview, without the fuzz. No areas were barred to Active Complement,
except the fearsome threshold of the torus itself. She should come back
with Sigurt, get him to give her a guided tour. But not the tomb, she thought.

If she went into the tomb, sheтАЩd like to do it alone.

The image of a dessicated heap of bones and skin, preserved intact,
flitted through her mind. The Tomb Wife in a stone room, an old lady fallen