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

scanning back and forth. His mouth - no, his mouth did not smile, but in the small parting of his lips it
seemed to find peace. If he would just listen - now - to the balalaika . . .
"Let me run the balalaika!"
"And get me canned? No, dushenka. We'll be late to the grind. Damn. That spare better be okay." He
turned from the sink and tapped a command on the lock console. The spare yoyo's condition read out in
a few crisp words. Not the best, but the battery was a retread, and old at that.
"The balalaika-"
"Come on, Laura. Shit, we're late already. Move it."
Laura put down her hand and deliberately began undogging her plates.
George Eastman Nexus had begun as a single cylinder, rotating to simulate standard Earth gravity.
From the inner surface, towers and delicately suspended trees of modular office clusters grew toward the
center. In those offices the engineers and managers of a thousand companies guided an industry worth
six trillion dollars in gold annually.
George Eastman grew outward as well. Downward from Earth-Zero swelled the industrial levels.
Some industries preferred the heavier gravity; many chemical processes actually worked more
efficiently under higher swing.
For other industries the heaviness was less necessary, but materials were cheap ever since the asteroid
Calliope had been towed into orbit around the moon for the steerable mirrors to mine.
It was less than three klicks from their pod to the advancing edge of E Minus Seven. Its monocrystal
rings girdling Eastman Nexus had been in place for ten months. At the forefront of construction the
longitudinal beams and outer-deck plates were being welded into position amid showers of sparks.
Behind the edge the power conduits and other piping were being laid, and farther still, the floor plates,
one meter square and removable, were being bolted down. Laura gripped the yoyo's cable tightly as they
rode, and felt through her fingers the sizzle of old motors in its gantry above her helmet.
Two of the welders paused long enough to let Borovsky pass between them, unharmed by the molten
droplets. Borovsky waved clear, and the yoyo purred on to the point where the floor plates began. He
parked it and punched in with the shift boss. Docked nine minutes - he shrugged, and Laura tallied the
beers he would have to forgo to make it up. Borovsky's partner, Andre Wolf Lair, thumped his shoulder
as Borovsky yanked his card from the clock. Borovsky grunted in greeting and returned a playful poke
to the Amerind's midsection. Coyne's lamp on the clock was green. Borovsky clenched his jaw and
glanced toward the supply dump. Coyne was loading diamond cutting wheels into his Enhanced
Leverage Manipulator.
Coyne looked up. Borovsky's personal microwave channel triggered, and a single scornful, whispered
word came across over Coyne's chuckle: "phobe."
Laura felt her man's pulse race. Quickly she squeezed his thigh and whispered in his ear, "He can't
even walk the Low Steel for a living. All he does is ride in that big yellow egg. You're twice the man he
ever will be."
"I'll kill him," Borovsky muttered. "Damn, I'll feed him to the stars."

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...Nancy%20Kress%20-%20Borovsky's%20Hollow%20Woman.txt (4 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

George Eastman Nexus turned twelve times over the course of a shift. Borovsky and Andre Wolf
Lair guided the longitudinal steel beams into position ahead of the edge, tacked them, and left them for
the welders. Wolf Lair was taller than Borovsky, larger than Coyne. Among the men who walked the
Low Steel he was a giant, with impeccable balance and a gentle, deep voice. His suit was much older
than Laura, with little skill in its E layer for speech and reasoning, and no F layer at all. The suit had no
name and spoke, when it had to, in Wolf Lair's own voice. Laura sensed that Wolf Lair did not like
intelligent machines, and she remained silent while he and Borovsky worked.
When the shift was half over, Coyne's ELM rumbled by on its way to the supply dump. As it passed,