"James Patrick Kelly - Dividing the Sustain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

well.тАЭ
 тАЬI donтАЩt want to go back to live in my old pod.тАЭ

тАЬSo I understand. You can move in with Ilona. IтАЩm ordering it now.тАЭ He
pushed himself back onto the lightboard. тАЬI take it that was your plan all along?тАЭ

Been could not help but grin.

тАЬWell, youтАЩve succeeded, sir.тАЭ He saluted Been. тАЬMy compliments.тАЭ

тАЬIf you have a minute, Captain, thereтАЩs a business matter IтАЩd like to dis-cuss.тАЭ

тАЬA minute is what I donтАЩt have just now, Mr. Watanabe.тАЭ Harlen Quellan
shook his head. тАЬYou have already taken too much of my time.тАЭ

тАЬMaybe later then?тАЭ

тАЬIlona!тАЭ Harlen Quellan s image knocked on the hatch to the head. тАЬAre you
all right?тАЭ

Been heard the toilet swoosh.

тАЬIlona is difficult enough as it is, sir.тАЭ Harlen Quellan wagged his foretoe at
Been. тАЬDonтАЩt make my life with her any harder.тАЭ

The hatch slid open. Ilona Quellan curled a hand around the threshold on
either side and pulled herself through, тАЬSo,тАЭ she said, тАЬwhat did I miss?тАЭ

****

The common name for Rags, IlonaтАЩs pet spider, was a marbled orbweaver. She was
about two centimeters long and ate hapless and wingless fruitflies which Ilona raised
in a jar next to her terrarium. Rags had a blindingly orange cephalothorax and black
and orange banded legs. Her huge cream-colored abdomen was marked with a black
pattern that looked like two faces screaming in pain. The spider reminded Been a
little of Ilona herself, with her outsized belly and the babyface hanging around her
neck, but he knew better than to remark on this.

While he couldnтАЩt see his way to doting on Rags quite the way Ilona did, he
did become fascinated by the spiderтАЩs web-building. She made one almost every
day, eating the old one so that she could build anew. In nature, Ilona said, Rags
would release a line of her webbing into the wind and wherever it caught she would
pull it tight. In the terrarium she walked her first line from one end of the glass to the
other. She would cross the center of the horizontal line and spin a web straight
down, pulling it into a Y shape. She would then spin many radii of nonsticky
structural webbing before finally finishing her structure with spirals of sticky capture
silk. Ilona usually dropped live fruitflies directly onto the web for Rags, although
sometimes she just let them loose in the terrarium to find their own path to doom.
Oc-casionally when Rags built a particularly beautiful web, Ilona would fetch her pet
out of the terrarium and spray the web with some gaily colored fixative, so she could