"George R. R. Martin - Loaves and Fishes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

Loaves and Fishes
Analog
October, 1985

Her name was Tolly Mune, but they called her all sorts of things.
Those entering her domain for the first time used her title with a certain amount of deference. She had
been Portmaster for more than forty standard years, and Deputy Portmaster before that, a colorful fixture
in the great orbital community that was officially known as the Port of SтАЩuthlam. Downstairs, planetside,
the office was only another box on the bureaucratic flowcharts, but up in orbit the Portmaster was
foreman, chief executive, judge, mayor, arbiter, legislator, mastermech, and head cop all in one. So they
called her the P.M.
The Port had started small and grown over the centuries, as SтАЩuthlamтАЩs swelling population made the
world an increasingly important market and a key link in the network of interstellar trade for the sector.
At port center was the station itself, a hollow asteroid some sixteen kilometers in diameter, with its parks
and shops and dormitories and warehouses and labs. Six predecessor stations, each larger than the last
and each now outdated, the oldest built three centuries back and no bigger than a good-sized starship,
clung to the Spiderhome like fat metal buds on a stone potato.
Spiderhome was what they called it now, because it sat at the center of the web, an intricate silver-metal
net cast across the dark of space. Radiating from the station in all directions were sixteen great spurs.
The newest was four kilometers long, and building; seven of the originals (the eighth had been destroyed
in an explosion) stabbed twelve kays out into space. Inside the great tubes were the portтАЩs industrial
zonesтАФwarehouses, factories, shipyards, customs gates, and embarkation centers, plus docking facilities
and repair bays for every class of starship known in the sector. Long pneumatic tubetrains ran through
the center of the spurs, moving cargo and passengers from gate to gate and to the crowded, noisy,
bustling nexus in Spiderhome, and the elevator downstairs.
Other, lesser tubes branched from the spurs, and still lesser passages from them, crossing and recrossing
the void, binding everything together in a pattern that grew in intricacy each year, as more and more
additions were made.
And between the web strands were the fliesтАФshuttles going up and down from the surface of SтАЩuthlam
with consignments too big or too volatile for the elevator, mining ships coming in with ore and ice from
the Frags, food freighters from the terraformed farming asteroids inward they called the Larder, and all
manner of interstellar traffic: luxurious Transcorp liners, traders from worlds as close as Vandeen or as
distant as Caissa and Newholme, merchant fleets from Kimdiss, warships from Bastion and Citadel, even
alien starcraft, Free Hruun and Raheemai and gethsoids and other, stranger species. They all came to the
Port of SтАЩuthlam and were welcome.
The ones who lived in Spiderhome, who worked in the bars and mess halls, moved the cargos, bought
and sold, repaired and fueled the ships, they called themselves spinnerets as a badge of honor. To them,
and to the flies who came calling often enough to be regulars, Tolly Mune was Ma SpiderтАФirascible,
foul-mouthed, rough-humored, frighteningly competent, omnipresent, indestructible, as big as a force of
nature and twice as mean. Some of them, those who had crossed her or earned her displeasure, had no
love for the Portmaster; to them she was the Steel Widow.
She was a big-boned, well-muscled, homely woman, as gaunt as any honest SтАЩuthlamese but so tall
(almost two meters) and so broad (those shoulders) that she had been considered something of a freak
downstairs. Her face was as creased and comfortable as old leather. Her age was forty-three local,
nearing ninety standard, but she didnтАЩt look an hour over sixty; she attributed that to a life in orbit.
тАЬGravityтАЩs the thing that ages you,тАЭ she would say. Except for a few starclass spas and hospitals and
tourist hotels in the Spiderhome, and the big liners with their gravity grids, the Port turned in endless
weightlessness, and free fall was Tolly MuneтАЩs natural element.
Her hair was silver and iron, bound up tightly when she worked, but off-duty it flowed behind her like a
cometтАЩs tail, following her every motion. And she did move. That big, gaunt, raw-boned body of hers