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

beyond their personal space; machine-generated hallucinations decoded by

the implant hugging Vargovic's optic nerve. Hummingbirds and seraphim were

in sickly vogue. Others were attended by autonomous perfumes which subtly

altered the moods of those around them. Slightly lower down the social

scale, Vargovic observed a clique of noisy tourists - antlered brats from

Circum-Jove. Then there was a discontinuous jump: squalid-looking Maunder

refugees, who must have accepted indenture to the Demarchy. The refugees

were quickly segregated from the more affluent immigrants, who found

themselves within a huge geodesic dome, resting above the ice on

refrigerated stilts. The walls of the dome glittered with duty-free shops,

boutiques and bars. The floor was bowl-shaped, slitherwalks and spiral

stairways descending to the nadir, where a quincunx of fluted marble

cylinders waited. Vargovic observed that the newly-arrived were queueing

for elevators which terminated in the cylinders. He joined a line and

waited.

"First time in Cadmus-Asterius?" asked the bearded man ahead of him,

iridophores in his plum-coloured jacket projecting Boolean propositions

from Sirikit's Machine Ethics in the Transenlightenment.

"First time on Europa, actually. First time Circum-Jove, you want the full

story."

"Down-system?"

"Mars."

The man nodded gravely. "Hear it's tough."
"You're not kidding." And he wasn't. Since the sun had dimmed - the second

Maunder minimum, repeating the behaviour which the sun had exhibited in