"Paul Mcauley - Red Dust" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

He was a tall thin man in a dark silk robe, its hood cast
over his sharp, high-cheekboned face. It was a mirror-image
of Lee's own face, a whim Lee now regretted but was unable
to ask Xiao Bing to edit out; that Bing had written the librarian
was favor enough.

The librarian said, "I have found nothing new since we
last spoke, Master, but I have accessed a promising new
level. Every day I feel I am getting closer to your parents."

Behind the librarian, tiers of chained leather-bound volumes
stepped up into darkness. A shaft of light from a high
narrow window slashed across their ranks, fell to a patch of
richly patterned carpet no bigger than a hand.

Lee, who had never mastered the knack of subvocalising,
mumbled, "You are here without compromise?" The librarian
had been working for two weeks now, had moved a long
way from the common data-access areas into undefined
regions. So far, by some miracle, its integrity had not been
tested.

The librarian said, "I had to kill a guardian, but I believe
it was not noticed."

With goggles and earpiece as the only sensory inputs, Lee
was aware of the faint warmth of the soft dust on which he
sat, the touch of cold air on his face. The librarian was only
a fictive interface; still, Lee felt a dry catch of fear when he
said, "Isn't that illegal? Show me."

The librarian put his hands together, fingertip steepled
against fingertip.

And suddenly a worm raced at Lee down an infinite corridor
between stacks of books. Although it moved at tremendous
speed it also seemed to writhe about a single fixed
point, now showing the red serrated plates along its back,
now its pale belly. Its golden eyes were huge under arched
brows; its mouth gaped amongst bristles and kept on gaping,
a vast yawning cave ringed by wet razor-sharp ridges. Lee
saw his hands tear a page from the book he carried, wad it
 12
PAUL J. MCAULEY
and toss it into the worm's maw: there was a soundless flash
and the worm vanished.
"That was ten days ago," the librarian said. "I travelled
on until I reached this place, and now I will try and penetrate
the data files. They are very old, as you see."
"Ten days?" Lee had accessed the librarian only that