"Paul J. McAuley - Dead Man Walking" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

The dart shorted out the electronics in the assassinтАЩs suit, and enough current passed
through the port to briefly stun her. I pushed her away as we dropped toward the
setback, but she managed to fire a last shot as she spun into the void beyond the edge
of the setback. She was either phenomenally lucky or incredibly skillful: it took off my
thumb and three fingers of my right hand.
She fell more than a kilometer. Even in the low gravity, it was more than enough to
kill her, but just to make sure I dropped several blocks of ice onto her. The third
smashed her visor. YouтАЩll find her body, if you havenтАЩt already, more or less directly
below the spot where you found mine.
The assassin had vented most of my air supply and taken my phone and emergency
beacon; the dart IтАЩd used on her had crippled what was left of my pressure suitтАЩs life
support system. The suitтАЩs insulation is pretty good, but IтАЩm beginning to feel the bite
of the cold now, my hand is growing pretty tired from using the squeeze pump to push
air through the rebreather, and IтАЩm getting a bad headache as the carbon dioxide
concentration in my air supply inexorably rises. I killed the ecosystem of East of Eden
by sabotaging the balance of its atmospheric gases, and now the same imbalance is
killing me.
Just about the only thing still working is the stupid little chip I stuck in my helmet to
record my conversation with the assassin. By now, you probably know more about her
than I do. Perhaps you even know who sent her here.
I donтАЩt have much time left. Perhaps itтАЩs because the increasing carbon dioxide level
is making me comfortably stupid, but I find that I donтАЩt mind dying. I told you that I
confronted the assassin to save myself. I think now that I may have been wrong about
that. I may have gone on the run after the Quiet War, but in my own way I have
served you right up until the end of my life.
IтАЩm going to sign off now. I want to spend my last moments remembering my freestyle
climb up those twenty kilometers of sheer ice in Prospero Chasma. I want to remember
how at the end I stood tired and alone at the top of a world-cleaving fault left over from
a shattering collision four billion years ago, with Uranus tilted at the horizon,
half-full, serene and remote, and the infinite black, starry sky above. I felt so utterly
insignificant then, and yet so happy, too, without a single regret for anything at all in
my silly little life.
(c)Copyright 2006 by Paul J. McAuley