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

runes which will almost always be accepted by the aperture's own machinery. Furthermore, they can
almost always guarantee that the desired routing is the one that the aperture machinery will provide.

In short, you usually get where you want to go.

Take a simple point-to-point transfer, like the Hauraki run. In that case there is no real disadvantage in
using automatic syntax generators. But for longer trajectoriesтАФthose that may involve six or seven
transits between aperture hubsтАФmachines lose the edge. They find a solution, but usually it isn't the
optimum one. That's where syntax runners come in. People like Suzy have an intuitive grasp of syntax
solutions. They dream in runes. When they see a poorly constructed script, they feel it like a toothache.
It affronts them.
A good syntax runner can shave days off a route. For a company like Ashanti Industrial, that can make a
lot of difference.

But I wasn't a syntax runner. I could tell when something had gone wrong with the platelets, but
otherwise I had no choice. I had to trust that Suzy had done her job.

But I knew Suzy wouldn't screw things up.

I twisted around and looked back the other way. Now that we were in space, the q-planes had
deployed. They were swung out from the hull on triple hundred-meter long jibs, like the arms of a
grapple. I checked that they were locked in their fully extended positions and that the status lights were
all in the green. The jibs were Ray's area. He'd been checking the alignment of the ski-shaped q-planes
when I ordered him to close-up ship and prepare to lift. I couldn't see any visible indication that they
were out of alignment, but then again it wouldn't take much to make our trip home bumpier than usual.
But as I'd told Ray, who cared? The Blue Goose could take a little tunnel turbulence. It was built to.

I checked the surge point again. Only three ships ahead of us.

I went back to the surge tanks and checked that Suzy and Ray were all right. Ray's tank had been
customized at the same time that Suzy had had hers done. It was full of images of what Suzy called the B
VM: the Blessed Virgin Mary. The BVM was always in a spacesuit, carrying a little spacesuited Jesus.
Their helmets were airbrushed gold halos. The artwork had a cheap, hasty look to it. I assumed Ray
hadn't spent as much as Suzy.

Quickly I stripped down to my underclothes. I plumbed into my own unpainted surge tank and closed the
lid. The buffering gel sloshed in. Within about twenty seconds I was already feeling drowsy. By the time
traffic control gave us the green light, I'd be asleep.

I've done it a thousand times. There was no fear, no apprehension. Just a tiny flicker of regret.

I've never seen an aperture. Then again, very few people have.

Witnesses report a doughnut shaped lump of dark chon-drite asteroid, about two kilometers across. The
entire middle section has been cored out, with the inner part of the ring faced by the quixotic-matter
machinery of the aperture itself. They say the q-matter machinery twinkles and moves all the while, like
the ticking innards of a very complicated clock. But the monitoring systems of the Aperture Authority
detect no movement at all.

It's alien technology. We have no idea how it works, or even who made it. Maybe, in hindsight, it's better