"Vonda N. McIntyre-Steelcollar Worker" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

The helix extended out of sight in both directions. Jannine and Neko had been working on this section
for a week. Jannine loved watching the helix evolve under her hands. The details of substrate, helix, and
elementals changed so fast that a human could alter the helix better than a robot, even better than
enzymes.
A flicker in Jannine's vision: the helix and the substrate and Neko vanished.
Jannine found herself in the real world. The couch held her among water-filled cushions, cradling her
body.
Quitting time.
The screen of her helmet reflected her face, an image as unreal and distorted against the smoky plastic
as Neko's face had been, back inside the system. The screen's color faded. The audio fuzz cut out.
The clamor and bustle of the factory surrounded her: the electronic whine of the system, the subsonic
drumming of coolant pumps, the voices and shapes of her coworkers as they got out of their couches and
tidied up for the day shift.
With her free left hand, Jannine opened the padded collar that secured her helmet. She raised the
mechanism from her head. The noise level rose.
She shivered. The factory was always chilly. Her awareness of her body faded when she worked. She
never felt cold till she came out of her workspace and back into a real life. On the substrate, the
temperature hovered just above absolute zero. Down there, she always felt warm. Up here, where the
laboring pumps only incidentally lowered the temperature a few degrees, she always felt cold.
She unbuckled the cuff around her right wrist and freed her hand from the magnetic control.
Wiggling her fingers, clenching her fist, shaking her arm, she slid out of the couch. All around her, her
coworkers stood and stretched and groaned in the cold. She unplugged her helmet, wiped it down, and
stowed it. She wished she owned one, a helmet she could impress her own settings in and paint with her
own design.
Neko crossed the aisle and joined her. "Brownie points tonight," Neko said.
She moved smoothly, easily, with none of the stiffness everyone else was feeling. She moved like her
nickname, Neko, cat.
"A bonus, huh?" Jannine said. "Great. We make a good team."
They'd fallen into the habit of chatting for a few minutes after work while they waited for the crush at
the exit to ease.
But instead of replying, Neko stared at Jannine's control couch, at the manipulator that reduced the
motions of Jannine's hand to movements in the angstrom range.
"Did you notice what it is we're making?" Neko said.
Up on her toes, Jannine shifted her weight from one foot to the other, bouncing in place, trying to get
warm. The day-shift people came into the factory, moving between the hulking shapes of the couches.
"Yeah, I guess," Jannine said. "I wasn't paying attention. Just following the blueprint. Some vaccine,
same as usual."
"Let's go." Neko strode away, her hands shoved in her pockets. She moved as gracefully as she did
down on the substrate, where gravity could be tuned and made a variable.
Jannine hurried after her. She waved across the factory at Evan, the day-shift worker who cohabited
her couch. But this morning, she didn't wait to talk.
She followed Neko through the security checkout. They were nearly the last ones out, but waiting had
saved them standing in the crowd. Jannine's life gave her plenty of lines to stand in.
Jannine thought the security system was stupid, a waste of time. No one on the production floor had
access to anything that they could carry away. Except the helmets. You'd have to be awfully stupid to try
to walk out with a helmet, however tempting it would be to take one for your own.
Jannine shoved her I.D. into the slot. She waited. The computer checked her, passed her, and rolled
her I.D. back. At the same time it emitted a slip of paper, thrusting it out like a slow insolent tongue. It
beeped to draw her attention.
Ignore it, she told herself. She wanted to, but Neko had seen it. If Jannine left the note, Neko would