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

meandering bore of the tunnel in which we walked, it was as cleanly cut as
a rifle barrel. In one direction the tunnel was blocked by a bullet-nosed
cylinder, closely modelled on the trains in Tiger's Eye. Seemingly of its
own volition, the train lit up and edged forward, a door puckering open.
"Get in," Wendigo said." And lose the helmet. You won't need it where
we're going. "
Inside I coughed phlegmy ropes of thick from my lungs.
Transitioning between breathing modes isn't pleasant - more so since I'd
breathed nothing but thick for six weeks. But after a few lungfuls of the
train's antiseptic air, the dark blotches around my vision began to
recede.
Wendigo did likewise, only with more dignity.
Yarrow lay on one of the couches, stiff as a statue carved in soap. Her
skin was cyanotic, a single all-enveloping bruise. Pilot skin is a better
vacuum barrier than the usual stuff, and vacuum itself is a far better
insulator against heat loss than air. But where I'd lifted her my gloves
had embossed fingerprints into her flesh. Worse was the broad stripe of
ruined skin down her back and the left side of her tail, where she had
lain against the splinter's surface.
But her head looked better. When she hit vac, biomodified seals would have
shut within her skull, barricading every possible avenue for pressure,
moisture or blood loss. Even her eyelids would have fused tight. Implanted
glands in her carotid artery would have released droves of friendly
demons, quickly replicating via nonessential tissue in order to weave a
protective scaffold through her brain.
Good for an hour or so - maybe longer. But only if the hostile demons
hadn't screwed with Yarrow's native ones.
"You were about to tell me about the wasps," I said, as curious to hear
the rest of Wendigo's story as I was to blank my doubts about Yarrow.
"Well, it's rather simple. They got smart."
"The wasps?"
She clicked the steel fingers of her hand. "Overnight. Just over a hundred
years ago."
I tried not to look too overwhelmed. Intriguing as all this was, I wasn't
treating it as anything other than an outlandish attempt to distract me
from the main reason for my being here, which remained killing the
defector. Wendigo's story explained some of the anomalies we'd so far
encountered - but that didn't rule out a dozen more plausible
explanations. Meanwhile, it was amusing to try and catch her out. "So they
got smart," I said. "You mean our wasps, or theirs?"
"Doesn't mean a damn anymore. Maybe it just happened to one machine in the
Swirl, and then spread like wildfire to all the trillions of other wasps.
Or maybe it happened simultaneously, in response to some stimulus we can't
even guess at."
"Want to hazard a guess?"
"I don't think it's important, Spirey." She sounded like she wanted to put
a lot of distance between herself and this topic. "Point is it happened.
Afterwards, distinctions between us and the enemy - at least from the
point of view of the wasps - completely vanished."
"Workers of the Swirl unite."