"Nancy Kress - Borovsky's Hollow Woman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)
BOROVSKY'S HOLLOW WOMAN
by JEFF DUNTEMANN and NANCY KRESS
[first published in Omni October 1983]
[VERSION 1.1 (Jan 28 02). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number
by 0.1 and redistribute.]
Laura walked the Low Steel above the stars, searching for her man.
It was 2.3 klicks across the skeletal terrain by the most direct route - the e blue line on the diagram of
the construction zone burned in the eye of Laura's mind. No one but Mikhail Borovsky would take that
particular route across the unfinished girders of the titan cylinder's outermost level, and even - he would
not take it without her.
One foot before the other, lift, swing, step. The pilot beam was solid monocrystal steel, I-section, one
decimeter wide. One hundred meters to her left and right identical girders glittered in the always-
changing light. They were the primary structural support of the latest, lowest level of George Eastman
Nexus. Each girder was a single crystal of iron atoms, one hundred nineteen kilometers in
For a kilometer ahead and behind, it was Laura and her beam.
A man in the saddle of a six-wheeled yoyo swung under the horizon far away antispinward and
quickly approached her, soon passing to the rear and vanishing. Borovsky's yoyo was a four-wheeler.
The earth swung up behind her and made blue highlights creep across the dull gray steel plates ten
meters above her helmet. It slipped above the horizon and was gone again for another forty minutes.
Laura adjusted the magnetism in her boot soles. Just enough to add a little friction, a little sureness. If
she fell outward from the rotating structure into the starry darkness the steelworkers called the Pit, no
one would fall after to her rescue. But she would not fall. Steel was her medium, just as it was
Borovsky's, and she loved it. Steel was sure and clean and true. It could be trusted, as Borovsky could be
trusted when he wasn't-
No. She would not allow that thought to be completed.
Where had they gone? Borovsky, in rubber underwear, off on a yoyo to fight a man twice his size,
somewhere on a level swinging more than 1.6 g. Falling on your face could flatten your skull on E
Minus Seven. Fighting could dock you a week's pay. Ignoring a challenge could get you called a phobe.
A coward. A . . . woman.
Where?
Step following step, body bent forward, using the artificial gravity to help carry her onward, Laura
searched. She scanned the chatter on the CB and the bloody-murder band. Nothing spoke of a man in
rubber hurt on E Minus Seven.
Less than five hundred meters of open steel remained. Far ahead Laura saw something streak through
the shadows toward the sucking stars. She followed desperately with her eyes and saw it catch the sun
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...Nancy%20Kress%20-%20Borovsky's%20Hollow%20Woman.txt (1 of 19)23-2-2006 22:39:23
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20documenten/spaar/Nancy%20Kress%20-%20Borovsky's%20Hollow%20Woman.txt
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |