"Alastair Reynolds - Beyond the Aquila Rift" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

into the distance long after she'd passed out of sight.

I left the Blue Goose, walking in the opposite direction to Suzy. Overhead, the bulk carriers slid in one
after the other. You heard them long before you saw them. Mournful, cetacean moans cut down through
the piss-yellow clouds over the port. When they emerged, you saw dark hulls scabbed and scarred by
the blocky extrusions of syntax patterning, jibs and q-planes retracted for landing and undercarriage
clutching down like talons. The carriers stopped over their allocated wells and lowered down on a
scream of thrust. Docking gantries closed around them like grasping skeletal fingers. Cargo handling
'saurs plodded out of their holding pens, some of them autonomous, some of them still being ridden by
trainers. There was a shocking silence as the engines cut, until the next carrier began to approach through
the clouds.

I always like watching ships coming and going, even when they're holding my own ship on the ground. I
couldn't read the syntax, but I knew these ships had come in all the way from the Rift. The Aquila Rift is
about as far out as anyone ever goes. At median tunnel speeds, it's a year from the center of the Local
Bubble.

I've been out that way once in my life. I've seen the view from the near side of the Rift, like a good
tourist. It was about far enough for me.

When there was a lull in the landing pattern, I ducked into a bar and found an Aperture Authority booth
that took Ashanti credit. I sat in the seat and recorded a thirty-second message to Katerina. I told her I
was on my way back but that we were stuck on Arkangel for another few hours. I warned her that the
delay might cascade through to our tunnel routing, depending on how busy things were at the Aperture
Authority's end. Based on past experience, an eight-hour ground hold might become a two day hold at
the surge point. I told her I'd be back, but she shouldn't worry if I was a few days late.

Outside a diplodocus slouched by with a freight container strapped between its legs.

I told Katerina T loved her and couldn't wait to get back home.

While I walked back to the Blue Goose, I thought of the message racing ahead of me. Transmitted at
lightspeed up-system, then copied into the memory buffer of the next outgoing ship. Chances were, that
particular ship wasn't headed to Barranquilla or anywhere near it. The Aperture Authority would have to
relay the message from ship to ship until it reached its destination. I might even reach Barranquilla ahead
of it, but in all my years of delays that had only happened once. The system worked all right.

Overhead, a white passenger liner had been slotted in between the bulk carriers. I lifted up my mask to
get a better look at it. I got a hit of ozone, fuel, and dinosaur dung. That was Arkangel all right. You
couldn't mistake it for any other place in the Bubble. There were four hundred worlds out there, up to a
dozen surface ports on every planet, and none of them smelled bad in quite the same way.

"Thorn?"

I followed the voice. It was Ray, standing by the dock.

"You finished checking those planes?" I asked.

Ray shook his head. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. They were a little off-alignment,
soтАФseeing as we're going to be sitting here for eight hoursтАФI decided to run a full recalibration."