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

pain.
Borovsky swore to himself in Russian. Laura longed not to run, but Borovsky's legs were running; so
her legs ran. His arms swung in a deadly determined rhythm; so hers swung, too.
Coyne was a pathetic scarecrow, highlighted in every detail by the cold lights of Laura's helmet
beam. His rubber suit was smudged and torn, helmet long abandoned to lighten himself. He had only a
few seconds' head start and appeared close to exhaustion. As much as Laura hated Coyne, she felt a
moment of pity for him.
Coyne chose that moment to look over his shoulder, side-stumbling for two steps. He moaned and
turned away but it had been enough. Laura had seen his face, smeared with the grime of the tunnels
mixed with tears of exertion, and abruptly she saw herself through his eyes.
Shaped like a man cut out of steel and crushed in a magnetic press; torso nearly as wide as it was tall;

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arms and legs clusters of hydraulic cylinders contracting and extending in smooth, polished motions.
Faceless, silvered helmet without any neck, ruined instruments atop it dangling by tiny wires and
striking the helmet's sides with little sounds. Hands twice human size, guided by flesh but powered by a
hydraulic exoskeleton strong enough to crush rocks. Hands reaching forward, fingers splayed and
grasping, grasping. A machine bent on death.
But she was not! She was life, productivity, strength, steel! She was, in her soul-
No time. Coyne screamed. again, stumbled, fell to his knees, rolled over, and stared in wide-eyed
horror as Laura bore down on him.
Her right hand caught him by the neck and lifted him like a rag doll. He gurgled, eyes bulging, as
Borovsky slammed him against the steel wall.
Borovsky's hand squeezed.
Horror-struck, Laura felt her hand squeeze.
Coyne tore at the hand around his neck, hammered his fists against the smooth cylinders and the
silver pistons that were slowly forcing Laura's fingers together. His mouth twisted, tongue pushing to
one side, struggling to let his throat breathe. Laura felt his frantic heartbeat hammering in the veins of
his neck. And in Coyne's eyes, under the terror and rage, Laura saw something else: a soul slipping
away. A trapped and mean soul, but real - as real as the soul she had seen in the eyes of the woman
trapped on the bed. A soul that in a few more heartbeats would be gone.
Because of her.
"No!" she cried in Borovsky's ears. "Stop this! You're killing him!"
"Goddamned right! Squeeze!" Borovsky grunted.
Borovsky squeezed. Laura squeezed. Frantically Laura raced through her options. Borovsky was
mad, insane - she could drug him. She had tranquilizers enough to make him sleep in seconds. Tiny
valves opened in the medpack on her hip, opiates pulsed down a tube toward the needles in their sheaths
behind his buttocks. The needle - she could plunge it home, the power was hers.
The command formed, and with it appeared something new:
A cloud, fiery red, rising above the F layer she called her soul. It hovered, an imagic representation of
what would happen if she disobeyed Borovsky's command to squeeze. Driven by terror and love, she
asked herself one question: What will happen to Borovsky if he kills? But not another: What will happen
to Laura if she kills? Now, all at once, she knew. The consequence was inescapable, built into the bright
layers of her mind and the spiderweb paths between them: She would lose her soul, the ravening red
cloud would burn it out of her. She must obey Borovsky's command to squeeze or her soul would be
destroyed. She must not kill or her soul would be destroyed.
She was going to become the soulless death tool she had seen in Coyne's eyes.
A grim thought appeared out of nowhere: Men are judged by their maker at the moment of their