"Dan Simmons - Orphans of the Helix" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

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Orphans of the Helix (v1.1)
Dan Simmons, 1999



The great spinship translated down from Hawking space into the red-and-white double light of a
close binary. While the 684,300 people of the Amoiete Spectrum Helix dreamt on in deep cryogenic
sleep, the five AIs in charge of the ship conferred. They had encountered an unusual phenomenon
and while four of the five had agreed it important enough to bring the huge spinship out of C-plus
Hawking space, there was a lively debate -- continuing for several microseconds -- about what to
do next.
The spinship itself looked beautiful in the distant light of the two stars, white and red light
bathing its kilometer-long skin, the starlight flashing on the three thousand environmental deep-
sleep pods, the groups of thirty pods on each of the one hundred spin hubs spinning past so
quickly that the swing arms were like the blur of great, overlapping fan blades, while the three
thousand pods themselves appeared to be a single, flashing gem blazing with red and white light.
The Aeneans had adapted the ship so that the hubs of the spinwheels along the long, central shaft
of the ship were slanted -- the first thirty spin arms angled back, the second hub angling its
longer thirty-pod arms forward, so that the deep-sleep pods themselves passed between each other
with only microseconds of separation, coalescing into a solid blur that made the ship under full
spin resemble exactly what its name implied -- Helix. An observer watching from some hundreds of
kilometers away would see what looked to be a rotating human double DNA helix catching the light
from the paired suns.
All five of the AIs decided that it would be best to call in the spin pods. First the great
hubs changed their orientation until the gleaming helix became a series of three thousand slowing
carbon-carbon spin arms, each with an ovoid pod visible at its tip through the slowing blur of
speed. Then the pod arms stopped and retracted against the long ship, each deep-sleep pod fitting
into a concave nesting cusp in the hull like an egg being set carefully into a container.
The Helix, no longer resembling its name now so much as a long, slender arrow with command
centers at the bulbous, triangular head, and the Hawking drive and larger fusion engines bulking
at the stern, morphed eight layers of covering over the nested spin arms and pods. All of the AIs
voted to decelerate toward the G8 white star under a conservative four hundred gravities and to
extend the containment field to class twenty. There was no visible threat in either system of the
binary, but the red giant in the more distant system was -- as it should be -- expelling vast
amounts of dust and stellar debris. The AI who took the greatest pride in its navigational skills
and caution warned that the entry trajectory toward the G8 star should steer very clear of the L1
Roche lobe point because of the massive heliosphere shock waves there, and all five AIs began
charting a deceleration course into the G8 system that would avoid the worst of the heliosphere
turmoil. The radiation shock waves there could be dealt with easily using even a class-three
containment field, but with 684,300 human souls aboard and under their care, none of the AIs would
take the slightest chance.
Their next decision was unanimous and inevitable. Given the reason for the deviation and
deceleration into the G8 system, they would have to awaken humans. Saigy├┤, AI in charge of
personnel lists, duty rosters, psychology profiles, and who had made it its business to meet and
know each of the 684,300 men, women, and children, took several seconds to review the list before
deciding on the nine people to awaken.
Dem Lia awoke with none of the dull hangover feel of the old-fashioned cryogenic fugue units.
She felt rested and fit as she sat up in her deep-sleep creche, the unit arm offering her the