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

sat beside him, slipped him a tube of fish paste, and whispered, "You're replacing a casualty on the tech
team out there. Don't fuck up and you'll make me proud."
Echo sucked down paste and spluttered, "What kind of casualty?"

"The bitch went crazy. Tried to kill a couple of my men. Can you believe that? They iced her ass straight
away, of course."

"Of course they did. It's what soldiers do."

Captain Achilles thrust his face close to Echo's. His eyes were bloodshot and he reeked of male
aggression. A hectic butterfly rash from steroid overdose stippled his nose and cheeks. He grinned and
said, "You better believe it, little bro."

Echo could feel his cells bloom gratefully as the protein in the fishpaste began to enter his starved system.
It was laced with testosterone and steroids and oestrogen suppressant, all going straight to work on him
too. He had squeezed the plastic tube flat; now, he unzipped the seam with a thumbnail and licked up the
last smears of paste.

Captain Achilles, watching in disgust, said, "Don't they feed you in your nasty little warren?"

"Of course not. Soldiers get all the real food."

"We need it to keep strong and fit."

"And stupid. I bet your people didn't even try and find out why that poor tech went crazy before they
iced her."

Captain Achilles gave Echo a tab. "That's your job, bro. Stay sharp and do good work and maybe you'll
get back in one piece."

##########

The tab, high-grade military issue meth, was kicking in when the bus boosted with a bone-deep roar and
bruising acceleration. The meth gave everything a harsh, heightened edge, and Echo's thoughts tumbled
like a rain of razor blades. His p-suit couldn't access the bus's video system, but he was right in the back
of the cargo tube, and by pulling his harness to its full extension he could lean over and look out the
scratched port.

The full Earth hung in the black sky, white as a sunblinded eye, bright enough to cast shadows across the
heavily cratered terrain that was unravelling below the bus's keel. Echo activated the scope on the suit's
teevee system, was rewarded with a fuzzy, upside down view of Earth's ice-covered disc. He could just
make out the belt of volcanoes along the equator, tiny blotches against a uniform white so blinding it was
like staring at the sun.

Fifty years ago, a robot probe, the last sent from the Moon to Earth, had discovered that bacteria and
algae were still living around the volcanoes, in hot springs and in water trapped under fresh lava fields.
Apart from a few species clinging to deep sea hydrothermal vents, this was the only surviving life on
Earth. Humanity's survival on the Moon was just as precarious. When the sun's luminescence had began
to decline, and ice had spread towards the equator from the north and south poles, reviving old space
flight technologies had taken second place to fighting for dwindling habitable territory. Grandiose plans to