"Will McCarthy - Bloom" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCarty Sarah)

"I guess so, yeah."

"Huh. Weird. You'd think if they were going to go to the trouble, it'd be for something more dramatic.
But what do I know, right? Nothing. That's why I'm stuck in shoe heaven. Anyway, Johnny, we're surely
going to miss you."

"Likewise," I said. "You'll keep in touch?"

"Yes. Actually, that's my job."

"Oh, yeah. Right."

And that, sad to report, was about all the conversation we had in us that night. Herodotus, I hear, was no
great conversationalist either.

Four

A CAPITAL
SHIP
Base, town, factory, port, whatever Galileo may be, the first thing you notice about it is the peculiar
nature of the cold. Warm air blasts through the corridors, drying the eyes and mucous membranes,
roughing up the throat, and yet the wallsтАж Touch them for a moment and the cool is refreshing, for
longer, and you may lose some skin. Layered composite/ceramic nearly a meter thick, they are fine
thermal insulators, but the temperature in the rock outside is barely seventy kelvins, and it seeps.

Same goes for the floors and ceilings, so as I wandered in search of the shipyards that day, my feet and
scalp were telling me I was cold, even as sweat drenched and stained the armpits of my shirt. Well,
"wandered" is not really the right word, since a detailed map scrolled and swiveled on my zee-spec as I
negotiated the hallways. But alongside it was a slow, plaintext news dump, with low-volume narration
mumbling from the earpieces, and anyway I was taking the long way around, in no hurry and in fact under
orders (well, suggestions) to gather information from any and all sources.

"Whatever seems appropriate," the message had said. "Whatever helps you do your job, do. We're
paying for your judgment in these matters, so exercise it."

A light tour of Galileo, then, a bit of context for all that is to follow. Alas, there isn't much to tell. If you've
been there, you know the town (factory? base?) is a rat hole, a maze of tunnels and chambers that look
and smell like they've been pummeled with hand tools and hosed down with oil. You get that sort of look
when ten thousand residents, none of them permanent, pass through their work contracts here like
boarding-school students, unencumbered by love or respect for their surroundings. Too close to the
equator here, too close to the surface. It's not that it feels unsafeтАФin fact, Galileo probably has the best
Immune and Response systems in existence. It's not that there isn't enough money flowing through; the
heavy elements on Ganymede are mainly imported through these very docks. It's not, as some have
claimed, a lack of "feminine touch," as something like a third of the residents are in fact female.

The problem is Galileo itself; remoteness is part of the identity of the place, part of its history. Never mind
that it's as easy to reach now as any other part of Ganymede, and certainly much easier than Callisto or,
God help us all, Titan. It just never has been "home" to anyone, and for that reason it never will be. Some
places are just like that.