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

Like all Jupiter's moons, like all the moons of the outer system, Ganymede's surface is cold
enough to liquefy both oxygen and nitrogen, and while the spore-fouled air was not cooled quite
that far, Innensburg's ground temperature quickly dropped below the freezing point of water, and
then below that of carbon dioxide. seconds-brief rain fell and froze. Mycoric replication slowed to
a crawl. A sigh of mingled fear and relief went up all over the city, visible as columns of white
steam in the flashlight beams of the Response. The emergency far from over, but now survivable,
now something that could be dealt with in a reasoned, methodical manner.

Some thirty-one deaths were later attributed to the cold, to the darkness, to the lack of domestic
power and computing, and though some of the families did attempt to bring suit against the
authorities responsible, public and judicial outrage squashed the move before it had gotten very
far. One hundred and eighty-seven deaths preceded the chilldown, after all, and most of
Innensburg's fifty thousand residents came out of it with only minor injuries.

Throughout the Immunity, our problems are the same: so far from the places of our birth, so far
from the sun's warm rays, so far from the lives we once expected to lead. Eaten by the
Mycosystem, those lives, and billions of others as well. and yet out here in the cold and dark we
hang on, even thrive, because we're brave enough to believe we can. If the space around us is
lousy with mycoric spores blown upward by solar wind, well, at least we can do what's necessary
to keep them outside.

I think the Honorable Klaus Pensbruck, in closing the book on Glazer v. Cholm, speaks for us all
with his immortal words, "Shut up, lady. We don't want to end up like the Earth."

From Innensburg and the Fear of Failure
┬й 2101 by John Strasheim

One

DESTINATI
ON
That my first meeting with Vaclav Lottick went poorly goes without saying. The most powerful man in the
solar system, yes, you can believe he had better things to do than exchange small talk with me. And yet,
certain business can be conducted in no other way.

He looked up and smiled when his secretary, a quiet, efficient man, ushered me inside the office.
Everything beige and cream and shiny, not quite sterile in appearance but compact, and clean. Very
clean. The windows' light was from behind Lottick, highlighting every stray hair, and the desk lamp
seemed designed to show off the lines in his face. A pale man, nearly bald, his rumpled smock no longer
white. Even his zee-spec was an older model, blocky, folding his ears back, weighing on the bridge of his
nose, leaving his features to sag that much more.

"John Strasheim, hi," he said, rising from his chair and extending a hand. "Thanks for coming on such
short notice. You're a few minutes early, actually."

Shaking the proffered appendage, I shrugged. "Just eager to oblige, I guess. What can IтАФ"

"Take a seat, then. Set to receive a flash?"

"Sure." Who wasn't?