"Alastair Reynolds - Spirey And The Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

splinter we'll be safe."
"No good, either. Hull's breached - it'll be at least an hour before even
part of it can be pressurised."
"And it'll take us an hour or so just to get there, won't it? So why are
we waiting?"
"Sorry, Spirey, but - "
Her words were drowned by the arrival of the second kinetic. This one
seemed to hit harder, the impact trailing away into aftergroans. The
holographic frescos were all dark now. Then - ever so slowly - the ceiling
ruptured, a huge mandible of ice probing into the chamber. We'd lost the
false gravity; now all that remained was the splinter's feeble pull,
dragging us obliquely toward one wall.
"But what?" I shouted in Wendigo's direction.
For a moment she had that absent look which said she was more Queen than
Wendigo. Then she nodded in reluctant acceptance. "Alright, Spirey. We
play it your way. Not because I think our chances are great. Just that I'd
rather be doing something."
"Amen to that."
It was uncomfortably dim now, much of the illumination having come from
the endlessly cycling frescos. But it wasn't silent. Though the groan of
the chamber's off-kilter spin was gone now, what remained was almost as
bad: the agonized shearing of the ice which lay beyond us. Helped by
wasps, we made it to the train. I carried Yarrow's corpse, but at the door
Wendigo said: "Leave her."
"No way."
"She's dead, Spirey. Everything of her that mattered, the Splinterqueen
already saved. You have to accept that. It was enough that you brought her
here, don't you understand? Carrying her now would only lessen your
chances - and that would really have pissed her off."
Some alien part of me allowed the wasps take the corpse. Then we were
inside, helmeted up and breathing thick.
As the train picked up speed, I glanced out the window, intent on seeing
the Queen one last time. It should have been too dark, but the chamber
looked bright. For a moment I presumed the frescos had come to life again,
but then something about the scene's unreal intensity told me the Queen
was weaving this image in my head. She hovered above the debris-strewn
terrazzo - except that this was more than the Queen I had seen before.
This was - what?
How she saw herself?
Ten of her twelve wasp composites were now back together, arranged in
constantly shifting formation. They now seemed more living than machine,
with diaphonous sunwings, chitin-black bodies, fur-sheened limbs and
sensors, and eyes which were faceted crystalline globes, sparkling in the
chamber's false light. That wasn't all. Before, I'd sensed the Queen as
something implied by her composites. Now I didn't need to imagine her.
Like a ghost in which the composites hung, she loomed vast in the chamber,
multiwinged and brooding -
And then we were gone.
We sped toward the surface for the next few minutes, waiting for the
impact of the next kinetic. When it hit, the train's cushioned ride