"Alastair Reynolds - Minla's Flowers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

MINLAтАЩS FLOWERS
ALASTAIR REYNOLDS


A
lastair Reynolds is a frequent contributor to Interzone, and has also sold to AsimovтАЩs
Science Fiction, Spectrum SF, and elsewhere. His first novel, Revelation Space,
was widely hailed as one of the major SF books of the year; it was quickly followed
by Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap, and Century Rain, all big
sprawling space operas that were big sellers as well, es-tablishing Reynolds as one
of the best and most popular new SF writers to enter the field in many years. His
other books include a novella collection, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days. His most
recent book is a new novel, Pushing Ice. Coming up are two new collections,
Galactic North and Zima Blue and Other Stories. A professional scientist with a
Ph.D. in astronomy, he comes from Wales, but lives in the Netherlands, where he
works for the European Space Agency.

ReynoldsтАЩs work is known for its grand scope, sweep, and scaleтАФin one
story, тАЬGalactic North,тАЭ a spaceship sets out in pursuit of another in a stern chase
that takes thousands of years of time and hundreds of thousands of light-years to
complete; in another, тАЬThousandth Night,тАЭ ultrarich immor-tals embark on a plan that
will call for the physical rearrangement of all the stars in the galaxy. In the intricate
and surprising novella that follows (a sort of prequel to his story тАЬMerlinтАЩs GunтАЭ), he
shows us that long-term plans can also have long-term consequencesтАФsome of
them not at all expected.

****

Mission interrupted.

I still donтАЩt know quite what happened. The ship and I were in routine Waynet
transit, all systems ticking over smoothly. I was deep in thought, a little drunk,
rubbing clues together like a caveman trying to make fire with rocks, hoping for the
spark that would point me toward the gun, the one no one ever thinks IтАЩm going to
find, the one I know with every fiber of my existence is out there somewhere.

Then it happened: a violent lurch that sent wine and glass flying across the
cabin, a shriek from the shipтАЩs alarms as it went into panic mode. I knew right away
that this was no ordinary Way turbulence. The ship was tumbling badly, but I fought
my way to the command deck and did what I could to bring her back under control.
Seat-of-the-pants flying, the way Gallinule and I used to do it on Plenitude, when
Plenitude still existed.
 That was when I knew we were outside the Waynet, dumped back into the
crushing slowness of normal space. The stars outside were stationary, their colors
showing no suggestion of relativistic distortion.

тАЬDamage?тАЭ I asked.

тАЬHow long have you got?тАЭ the ship snapped back.