"R. Garcia Y Robertson - Oxygen Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robertson R Garcia Y)

Oxygen Rising
R. GARCIA Y ROBERTSON
From Hartwell, David - Year's Best SF 11 (2006)

R. Garcia y Robertson, who doesn't own a computer, lives in Mount Vernon, Washington. His
recent novels include Knight Errant (2001), Lady Robyn (2003), and White Rose (2004), a series of
popular historical fantasy (timeslip) Romances, to be continued; and his 2006 novel is The
Firebird, a fantastic adventure set in the imaginary land of Markovy. His stories have appeared in
Fantasy & Science Fiction and Asi-mov's with some regularity for the last twenty years, and are
characterized by their broad range of concerns, stylistic sophistication, and attention to historical
detail. Garcia has tended toward time travel or historical settings both for his fantasy and SF
stories. He has published nearly fifty stories. The Moon Maid and Other Fantastic Adventures (1998)
collects some of his adventure and space opera SF.

"Oxygen Rising" was published in Asimov's. This space opera novelette takes place after an act of
terrorism, and along the way, as the characters travel, covers some of the same territory that
Sparhawk does in his story earlier in this book, but with a lighter touch. Garcia entertains, but
there's a kind of commentary on the side that reminds us of Robert A. Heinlein's entertaining and
instructive adventures.

"Hey, human, time to earn your pay!" Curled in a feline crouch, a silver comlink clipped to his furry ear,
the Super-Cat flashed Derek a toothy grin. Tawny fur showed through gaps in the bioconstruct's body
armor, and his oxygen bottle had a special nosepiece to accommodate the saber-tooth upper canines,
huge curved fangs whose roots ran back to the eye sockets. This deep in the highlands of Harmonia,
even Homo smilodon needed bottled air. Cradling a recoilless assault cannon, the SuperCat had small
use for ceremony, let-.ting everyone call him Leo.

Derek grunted, getting paid being the least of his worries. Lying prone, sucking oxygen, he fixed his gaze
on his bug's viewfinder. He had close-cropped hair, a somewhat fit body, and a fashionably biosculpted
faceтАФif you liked your humans pretty much unalteredтАФjust a stylish nose-job, xl-ten thousand night
vision zoom lenses, and straight white teeth. His bug sat perched on a heap of shattered glass a dozen
meters ahead, tight-casting to the viewfinder's whip antenna, letting Derek see in all directions without
getting out of his holeтАФalways an advantage.

Rain fell in a weepy drizzle, turning everything gray, the ground, the clouds, and the surviving tall glass
towers. Through the viewfinder, Derek saw a fairy city gone to seed, with great glass towers lying
smashed on the wet greensward, broken into glistening shards by the cometary impacts. Others stood
snapped in half, their shining interiors exposed to the downpour and turning green with algae.
Water had been rare when the city was built, but now it was everywhere, soaking shaky foundations,
making the dead city unsafe even when folks were not shooting at you. Whoever named the planet
Harmonia had a horrible sense of humor.
"Make sure no one shoots me in the back," Derek suggested, and the SuperCat just grinned, his clawed
finger resting lightly on the cannon's firing studтАФif Leo blew you apart, it would not be by accident.
Rising slowly, Derek stood up, alone and virtually unarmedтАФnothing deadly anyway, just a pair of
hypo-rings, and a sleep grenade tucked behind his waistband. Printed across the front and back of his
body armor in bold white letters were the words DO NOT SHOOT THIS MAN!
Twenty or so meters in front of him lay a smoldering Bug-mobile, a big one, with its gutted turret askew
and the port legs missing. Forty meters beyond the squashed Bug, a bunker was dug into the base of a
fallen tower, concealed by rubble and fast growing green tendrilsтАФeven Derek's special zoom lenses
could not make it out. Only deadly accurate fire had revealed its position. He took a big jolt of oxygen,