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

"I did do it."
Brovsky spat at her; his saliva spattered on her faceplate. "I wanted something better than a woman.
But I got a woman anyway. Go rot in a corner; I'm leaving, and to hell with you."
Something lurched in Laura's soul. It was not the red cloud, but like the red cloud it hurt and tore at
her. Fragile - she had never realized the soul in her steel body was so fragile. As fragile, she thought, as

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the lacy balalaika music trapped in its metal box.
Borovsky cursed her again. Numb, Laura peered into his eyes. It seemed to her that she saw nothing
at all.
She couldn't bear it. Pain, balalaika, souls, curses - she looked away, anywhere away, out the little
window to where the stars called from the Pit-
Crawling under the horizon was the bright-yellow ELM.
"Borovsky!"
"Shut up."
"He's coming back. Coyne. The yellow egg-"
Laura watched Borovsky whip around, his face suddenly pale. "No." He squeezed past the little sink
to the window. "No!"
Suspended on four motorized trucks that rode the flanges on the longitudinal beams was Coyne's
ELM. The main arm was extended forward. It was close enough now to see the diamond cutting wheel
glinting in the creeping sunlight.
"He's gonna cut us loose. Christ! Open up fast!" Borovsky tore off his rubber suit. Leaning into the
barrel shaped shower, he turned the water full on hot.
Borovsky pulled the sheet from the watercot and slit the plastic mattress with a paring knife. He
yanked the coil-corded immersion heater from the kitchen blister and threw it into the water spilling out
of the watercot mattress. In moments the water began to bubble into steam.
The ELM was just outside the pod. Borovsky climbed into Laura and was just sealing her ventral
plates when he heard the diamond wheel cut into the first of the pod's four suspension supports.
Borovsky cursed and sealed Laura's helmet gasket. He slapped his hips, felt for all his familiar tools.
The pod lurched, then tipped to one side as the first support broke loose. Boiling water cascaded out
onto the floor from the watercot. Steam was beginning to condense on the outside of Laura's faceplate.
They stumbled across the skewed floor to the rear of the pod and opened the lock door. The lock was
only a barrel itself, barely wide enough to admit Laura's bulk. Borovsky tapped commands into the lock
control, securing the inner door open.
Next he tore the cover off a guarded keypad and armed the explosive bolts supporting the lock's outer
hatch.
Inside the lock Laura heard Borovsky take a deep breath.
"Don't you never lie to me again," he said softly, and tapped the key that detonated the explosive
bolts.
The sound was deafening, and the whirlwind of steam that blew them forward was worse. Water
expelled into the void burst into droplets which exploded into steam. Laura felt for the chain ladder's
tubular rungs and hauled upward, blinded by the rolling cloud of steam pouring out of the pod. Two
meters overhead was the underbelly of George Eastman Nexus, here a tangle of beams to which the
chain ladder was welded. Borovsky and Laura pulled themselves up among the beams. Laura braced
herself on a beam and pulled the chain ladder until its welds tore loose. They let it drop into the steam.
They felt the second pod support give way. Steam continued to pour out of the cast-wide hatch for
many minutes. They felt the vibration of the ELM's trucks carrying it forward to reach the second pair of
pod supports. The whine of the diamond wheel biting into the steel carried up through the support into