"Alastair Reynolds - Nightingale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

NIGHTINGALE
Alastair Reynolds




HereтАЩs another brilliant story by Alastair Reynolds, whose тАЬSignal to NoiseтАЭ
appears elsewhere in this anthology. In the hair-raising adventure that
follows, he sweeps us along with a determined and heavily armed boarding
party off to storm a lost ghost ship as big as a moonтАФand crewed with a
full complement of bizarre and deadly ghosts of its own.

****

I checked the address Tomas Martinez had given me, shielding the paper
against the rain while I squinted at my scrawl. The number IтАЩd written down
didnтАЩt correspond with any of the high-and-dry offices, but it was a dead
ringer for one of the low-rent premises at street level. Here the walls of
Threadfall Canyon had been cut and buttressed to the height of six or
seven storeys, widening the available space at the bottom of the trench.
Buildings covered most of the walls, piled on top of each other, supported
by a haphazard arrangement of stilts and rickety, semi-permanent bamboo
scaffolding. Aerial walkways had been strung from one side of the street to
the other, with stairs and ladders snaking their way through the dark fissures
between the buildings. Now and then a wheeler sped through the water,
sending a filthy wave of brown water in its wake. Very rarely, a sleek,
claw-like volantor slid overhead. But volantors were off-world tech and not
many people on SkyтАЩs Edge could afford that kind of thing anymore.

It didnтАЩt look right to me, but all the evidence said that this had to be
the place.

I stepped out of the water, onto the wooden platform in front of the
office, and knocked on the glass-fronted door while rain curtained down
through holes in the striped awning above me. I was pushing hair out of my
eyes when the door opened.

IтАЩd seen enough photographs of Martinez to know this wasnтАЩt him.
This was a big bull of a man, nearly as wide as the door. He stood there
with his arms crossed in front of his chest, over which he wore only a
sleeveless black vest that was zipped down to the midriff. His muscles
were so tight it looked like he was wearing some kind of body-hugging
amplification suit. His head was very large and very bald, rooted to his body
by a neck like a small mountain range. The skin around his right eye was
paler than the rest of his face, in a neatly circular patch.

He looked down at me as if I was something that the rain had washed
in.

тАЬWhat?тАЭ he said, in a voice like the distant rumble of artillery.