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

down with a broken hip, too proud to cry for help when she heard her
servants arriving and departing. But how old was she? Maybe she was still
young when the food offerings тАЬremained untouched.тАЭ Sigurt would know.
She would ask him. Or better, sheтАЩd look it up herself, and impress him by
knowing something. It was probably all in the background files the
Complement didnтАЩt bother to read.

If the practice had survived into historical times it could still be
happening. Suttee had continued in India long after the Brits tried to stamp
it out, had resurfaced even in the Space Age. But it was the haunting that
fascinated Elen. Do ghosts travel? Did pharaohs and Inca sacrifices ever
wake up, bewildered, in glass cases, half a world away from home? Did
they wake up in modern times, to find themselves replicated in software?
What about a journey so immense that it has no duration? What damage
would the relativity storm of the blizzard do to something as fragile as
spiritual remains? How embarrassing if the loaned archaeology arrived
stripped of its patina and pedigree.... How embarrassing for the fledgling
enterprise of interstellar freight, if there should be a Missing Legend
incident!

She listened until she was sure she could hear footsteps inside the
ziggurat. No, itтАЩs okay, sheтАЩs still there, still haunting. Unhurried, peaceful,
timeless, the Tomb Wife was going about her quiet routines.

****

Rafe had agonized nightmares in which the LarтАЩszтАЩ gh├╗l crept around
his brain and scratched at his bunk closure: seeking live human flesh.
Seriously repentant, Sigurt dredged up (or fabricated) some potent ancient
LarтАЩszтАЩian prayers, which he translated into English phonemes, and taught
Rafe to recite. Elen had said nothing about the footsteps in the tomb, but
she felt equally responsible. She might have leaked it into the shared
reality; telepathy artifacts were the bane of starfaring. You learned that you
had to think no evil of your companions in the matrix, or there would be hell
to pay. And donтАЩt imagine spooks, or somebody will get spooked.

She did not confess. It would only have made Rafe worse.

****

At the end of a long shift she unplugged herself from the mainframe,
meeting as always the adrenaline of panic as she returned to ship-time:
clutching at her stomach, icy down her spine. Carter was the captain on this
trip, thank God. But Elen was the one who crunched the numbers. She was
finally responsible for all the lives on board (not to mention those huge
ancient gewgaws in the hold). And the worst was knowing that ifтАФif!тАФsheтАЩd
let a transcription error get by, it would not manifest itself until the closing
phase. Not until too late. ThatтАЩs quantum computing, no way around it.

The terror of the blizzard engulfed her. No radio, no GPS for this