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

traditional glass of orange juice.
"Emergency?" she said, her voice no more thick or dull than it would have been after a good
night's sleep.
"Nothing threatening the ship or the mission," said Saigy├┤, the AI. "An anomaly of interest. An
old radio transmission from a system which may be a possible source of resupply. There are no
problems whatsoever with ship function or life support. Everyone is well. The ship is in no
danger."
"How far are we from the last system we checked?" said Dem Lia, finishing her orange juice and
donning her shipsuit with its emerald green stripe on the left arm and turban. Her people had
traditionally worn desert robes, each robe the color of the Amoiete Spectrum that the different
families had chosen to honor, but robes were impractical for spinship travel where zero g was a
frequent environment.
"Six thousand three hundred light-years," said Saigy├┤.


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Dem Lia stopped herself from blinking. "How many years since last awakening?" she said softly.
"How many years' total voyage ship time? How many years' total voyage time-debt?"
"Nine ship years and one hundred two time-debt years since last awakening," said Saigy├┤. "Total
voyage ship time, thirty-six years. Total voyage time-debt relative to human space, four hundred
and one years, three months, one week, five days."
Dem Lia rubbed her neck. "How many of us are you awakening?"
"Nine."
Dem Lia nodded, quit wasting time chatting with the AI, glanced around only once at the two-
hundred-some sealed sarcophagi where her family and friends continued sleeping, and took the main
shipline people mover to the command deck, where the other eight would be gathering.
The Aeneans had followed the Amoiete Spectrum Helix people's request to construct the command
deck like the bridge of an ancient torchship or some Old Earth, pre-Hegira seagoing vessel. The
deck was oriented one direction to down and Dem Lia was pleased to notice on the ride to the
command deck that the ship's containment field held at a steady one gee. The bridge itself was
about twenty-five meters across and held command-nexus stations for the various specialists, as
well as a central table -- round, of course -- where the awakened were gathering, sipping coffee
and making the usual soft jokes about cryogenic deep-sleep dreams. All around the great hemisphere
of the command deck, broad windows opened onto space: Dem Lia stood a minute looking at the
strange arrangement of the stars, the view back along the seemingly infinite length of the Helix
itself where heavy filters dimmed the brilliance of the fusion-flame tail that now reached back
eight kilometers toward their destination -- and the binary system itself, one small white star
and one red giant, both clearly visible. The windows were not actual windows, of course; their
holo pickups could be changed and zoomed or opaqued in an instant, but for now the illusion was
perfect.
Dem Lia turned her attention to the eight people at the table. She had met all of them during
the two years of ship training with the Aeneans, but knew none of these individuals well. All had
been in the select group of fewer than a thousand chosen for possible awakening during transit.
She checked their color-band stripes as they made introductions over coffee.
Four men, five women. One of the other women was also an emerald green, which meant that Dem
Lia did not know if command would fall to her or the younger woman. Of course, consensus would
determine that at any rate, but since the emerald green band of the Amoiete Spectrum Helix poem
and society stood for resonance with nature, ability to command, comfort with technology, and the