"Paul McAuley - Interstitial" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

the next war pushed the proportion even higher. The soldiers are in charge now, but we were in charge
before the wars began. We used to set the agenda.

"And you know what? Even now we're stronger than soldiers. We face up to the truth. We can see what
has happened to the human race. As resources decreased, aggression between the bases increased. It
was inevitable. We'll fight the Copernicus Alliance and either they'll beat us or we'll beat them, but in the
end it won't matter who wins. Because after the last battle there will be no more resources to grab, and
the victorious base will dwindle and die out, or tear itself to pieces in civil war. We'll have lost everything
that makes us human. We'll have become as mindless as a nest of ants. Maybe we can't survive until the
Earth warms again, but we can die with dignity. That's what I've learned here. We'll beat the soldiers, and
we'll build our own Artifact. And in half a billion years perhaps some new species will understand what
we achieved. What we were."

The other techs were smiling. Echo felt blood heat his face as his sudden passion turned to
embarrassment. "Shit," he said, crestfallen. "You already know that."

"We're techs too," Syntax said.

"The woman who died," Echo said. "She wasn't crazy, was she?"

"We drew lots," Port said.

"And she lost."

"No," Syntax said gently. "She won. We knew the soldiers would send down a replacement because we
were one person short of a squad. That's how soldiers think. And we knew that they would send down a
spy."

"Someone with a way out," Port said.
"Of course, we weren't sure if he would help us," Slash said.

"We knew we could get him to help us," Basic said, "because he would be a tech, just like us."

Echo put his hand over the bruise on his forearm, where the capsule had been inserted. "Of course I'll
help you. Just tell me what I have to do."

##########

When everything was ready, when everyone was in position and the lights had been turned down, Echo
pinched the capsule in his arm. There was a moment of sharp pain as its acid leaked out and created a
charge to power the tiny radio transmitter. Echo sat on a cold slab of rock in the semi-darkness, and
waited.

An hour passed. Halfway through the second, dozens of diamond wires dropped down almost to the
ground, some with the cameras at their ends, some with glaring lights that spun like mad stars. Ten
minutes later, the bucket elevator came into view high overhead, descending past the black flank of the
Artifact. Echo stood up and backed away as it fell towards him.

Captain Achilles swung over the edge of the bucket before it grounded, surprisingly agile considering he
was wearing an armoured p-suit and toting an assault rifle. His voice blared at full volume through the