"Daniel Marcus - Ex Vitro" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marcus Daniel)

She had family in the EC, in Paris, and the information that came in on
the feed was frustrating in what it withheld. It was like deducing the
shape and texture of an object by studying the shadow it cast in bright,
white light.

They did know that a couple of days ago, PacRim had lobbed a
mini-nuke at one of the EC's factory-continents in the Indian Ocean,
claiming a territorial incursion. The EC had followed suit by vaporizing
Jakarta. There had been some sporadic ground combat in New Zealand
and Antarctica and a lot of saber-rattling, but no further nuclear
exchanges. The North American Free Trade Coalition and the Russian
Hegemony were sitting back and waiting, urging restraint and dialogue in
the emergency League session and keeping ground and space defenses at
full alert.

"PacRim's been making noises about a nova bomb, but nobody really
thinks they're that crazy. Naft's warning everybody off their wind farms in
the South AtlanticтАФthat's not exactly news, not since Johannesburg." Jax
shook his head. "The Net's going completely apeshit, of course. Traffic
volume's sky highтАж"

She took a step toward him and he stood up and put his arms around
her. They stood like that for several minutes, their breathing merging
slowly to unison. She smelled of sweat and of the hydroponics media she
had been working with earlier that morning. The taut, lean muscles of her
back relaxed to a yielding firmness under his hands. She began to move
against him, and she gently pushed him back into the chair.
 "Wait," he said. "Not here. Let's go to the pod."

Maddy nodded without speaking and turned around, reaching behind
her back for his hand. He took it and trailed her down the narrow
corridor. They passed other passageways branching off, leading to
sleeping quarters, the galley, the labs. At the end of the corridor, standing
like an abstract sculpture, was a gleaming, twisted piece of obsidian
Maddy had brought in from one of Titan's lava plains. Oxidation from the
station's atmosphere gave its surface a rainbow sheen. A rude step was
carved into its side with a hand laser. Above it was a round, open hatch.
Maddy let go of his hand, stepped up onto the rock, and pulled herself
through. Jax followed behind her, emerging into a crystalline bubble
surrounded by a sea of swirling mist.

They had grown the pod from a single crystal into a transparent,
5-meter hemisphere. It was light and thin, but strong enough to keep out
the deadly hydrocarbon brew that was Titan's atmosphere. The fog was
beginning to thin a little, and through it Jax could see the frozen
landscape glittering in tenebrous, diffuse light. He caught a glimpse of a
herd of slugs on the shore of the nearby ammonia sea. Their shiny,
chitinous bodies were scattered across the lava beach in a rough pattern,
like sheared concentric diamonds, slowly shifting.