"Alastair Reynolds - A Spy In Europa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

"A sample," Cholok answered, one of the easy, pre-set words which did not

need to be laboriously conveyed. But what followed took nearly five

minutes to put over, freighted via a series of rambling reminiscences of

the Phobos years. "A small shard of hyperdiamond."

Vargovic nodded. He knew what hyperdiamond was: a topologically complex

interweave of tubular fullerene; structurally similar to cellulose or bulk

chitin but thousands of times stronger; its rigidity artificially

maintained by some piezo-electric trick which Gilgamesh lacked.

"Interesting," Vargovic said. "But unfortunately not interesting enough."

She ordered another mocha and downed it replying. "Use your imagination.

Only the Demarchy knows how to synthesise it."

"It's also useless as a weapon."

"Depends. There's an application you should know about."

"What?"

"Keeping this city afloat - and I'm not talking about economic solvency.

Do you know about Buckminster Fuller? He lived about four hundred years

ago; believed absolute democracy could be achieved through technological

means."

"The fool."

"Maybe. But Fuller also invented the geodesic lattice which determines the

structure of the buckyball; the closed allotrope of tubular fullerene. The

city owes him on two counts."

"Save the lecture. How does the hyperdiamond come into it?"
"Flotation bubbles," she said. "Around the outside of the city. Each one

is a hundred-metre wide sphere of hyperdiamond, holding vacuum. A