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

"You're going to find out what they're doing down there," Captain Achilles said. His voice was rendered
flat and metallic by his p-suit's external speaker; his face was barely visible behind his gold-filmed visor.
"Once you're done, pinch the capsule hard; that will activate the radio transmitter."

"Why don't you go down there yourself?"

"Because they'd attack us and we'd have to kill them," Captain Achilles said. "And we don't want them
dead because they haven't finished work yet."
Echo tried to smile, although he knew it must look hideously false. "You're scared, aren't you? Scared of
techs. You don't understand what we do."

"The people down there have gone crazy. That's why we don't understand them. My advice is that you
don't go crazy too."

The soldier who was holding Echo turned him around and shoved him into a bucket elevator strung on a
jury-rigged winch. Captain Achilles said, "Work good, bro. Be a man. Do our family proud," and
thumbed a fat red button at the end of a hanging cable.

The winch hummed and the bucket fell into a narrow shaft towards a promise of light far below.

###########

It fell a long way: at least a kilometre. Echo's ears popped twice, adjusting to the increase in air pressure.
It grew noticeably warmer; still below freezing, but no longer dangerously so. Echo began to think he
might at least live through the ride when the elevator dropped into a huge chamber.

It was a deep cylindrical excavation with what looked like a missile or chimney rising from the rubble
floor and reaching all the way to the roof. There were banks of blazing lights, and the bare rock walls had
been sealed at tremendous expense with spray-on construction polymer. The missile tube or chimney or
pillar -- perhaps it was some kind of huge hydraulic ram, Echo thought -- was shiny black, and scratched
and hatched all over, as if attacked by a gang of graffiti artists armed with jack-hammers. It was rooted in
a jumble of raw rock, with bits of kit -- cylinders of polymer mix, ration packs and water kegs, a
microwave, a recycling toilet -- scattered around. Scaffolding rose up around it, clever, lightweight plastic
stuff that constantly shifted and shivered, balancing out the load of the four people who were climbing
down to meet Echo, their shadows cast hugely across polymer-sprayed walls.

There were just four techs working on what they called the Artifact: Basic and Syntax, Slash and Port.
Syntax was their leader. She explained that it was their mission to understand what the Artifact was trying
to tell them.

Echo craned to stare up the dizzying perspective of the pillar's glistening black length. It was clad in some
kind of seamless stone coat and radiated an evil cold; he had burnt his hand when he had touched its
flank. He said, "You're trying to figure out how it works?"

"In a way," Syntax said. She was a grizzled oldster of forty odd years, almost bald, her face scarred
where cancers had been removed, steel plates instead of teeth showing when she cracked a smile. Like
the others, she had the shiny-eyed look of someone who has spent far too long on meth. "The marks dug
into its surface are code. We're reading it, piece by piece."