"Nancy Kress - Borovsky's Hollow Woman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

have been true.
Inside the column were pipes and bus channels vanishing upward in the darkness. Running among
the pipes was an aluminum ladder. Laura turned off her suit lights and saw the warm spots where
sweating, rubber-suited hands had gripped the rungs.
The olfionics within her helmet smelled Borovsky's rage. "Up."
They climbed in darkness quickly, twice as fast as a nonamplified man could climb. Borovsky said
nothing, and Laura dared not plead for him to give up the chase. It would do no good and would only
feed the rage she so feared.
"It's a mess in here," she said truthfully, trying to read the swirl of multicolored images her infrared
eyes gave her.
By that level the column was pressurized, and warm air confused the heat traces Coyne had left
behind. She saw that the dust on the hatch handle had not been disturbed for some time. She did not
volunteer the information.
Borovsky steered Laqra's helmet crest beam along the ladder above. "Still too heavy. This is E Minus

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Four. He lives on E Minus Two. He's still climbing."
Without responding, Laura grasped the rungs and climbed.
Two airlocks higher E Minus Three began. Above them locks had been removed to make the column
an air-return manifold. The black mouths of air tunnels yawned on four sides, and a constant draft
through the tunnels had erased any possible heat traces the man might have left behind. Borovsky
scanned the four tunnels.
"He can't be far. Damn, I've got him. I know I do. Damn."
They stood in silence for tens of seconds. Laura gradually learned to separate the gentle white noise
of the air tunnels from the general subsonic rumble created everywhere by life in a steel habitat. With
panic and despair, she realized she could hear high above them the sound of a man's labored breathing.
A man Borovsky wanted to kill.
She could tell him where Coyne was, or not tell him - a sickening choice. She had never failed to tell
Borovsky, her man, her life, anything she knew he wanted to hear. If he commanded her, she would tell
him to refuse was to face consequences too final to consider. But if he found Coyne - if he killed Coyne
- what would the Combine do to Borovsky then?
The words formed a hundred times, and each time she wiped them away before sending them to her
helmet speakers. She strained to believe that hiding the truth was not a lie and knew that to believe so
would be lying to herself.
"He lives east of here," Borovsky said. "He'll follow the tube. Let's go."
"No," Laura said, forcing the words to form. "I hear him. He's up on the ladder somewhere."
Borovsky spat something foul in his native language. He gripped the ladder with both hands and sent
Laura's crest beam stabbing upward. Coyne was there, wrapped around the rungs, panting. Laura could
smell his sour sweat drifting down on the stale air.
Coyne stiffened, made motions to start climbing again.
"Stop!" Borovsky screamed. Laura's arms pulled with his arms, and the aluminum of the ladder tore
raggedly away from its lower wall brackets.
"Eat shit!" Coyne cried and dropped free of the ladder.
His boots struck the top of Laura's helmet, crushing many of her most delicate instruments, including
the paleblue glass oval that imaged in the infrared. His knees flexed, and he leaped to one side.
The still vicious swing of E Minus Three drew him down, but he had time to plan his movements. He
drew up in a ball and rolled, screaming in pain as one shoulder slammed into the steel. But then he was
up, stumbling, then running crookedly down one of the air tunnels, favoring his left leg and sobbing in