"Bruce Sterling - Crystal Express" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

CRYSTAL EXPRESS
by BRUCE STERLING (1989)

[VERSION 1.1 (Jan 23 04). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version
number by 0.1 and redistribute.]


CONTENTS

SHAPER/MECHANIST
SWARM [The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1982]
SPIDER ROSE [The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1982]
CICADA QUEEN [Universe 13, edited by Terry Carr, Doubleday, 1983]
SUNKEN GARDENS [Omni, June 1984]
TWENTY EVOCATIONS [Interzone #7, 1984]
SCIENCE FICTION
GREEN DAYS IN BRUNEI [Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October 1985]
SPOOK [The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1983]
THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME [Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June
1986]
FANTASY STORIES
TELLIAMED [The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1984]
THE LITTLE MAGIC SHOP [Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October 1987]
FLOWERS OF EDO [Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May 1987]
DINNER IN AUDOGHAST [Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May 1985]


We cannot separate the historic accidents of the society in which we were born from the
axiomatic bases of the universe.
--J. D. Bernal, 1925


The deadliest bullshit is odorless and transparent.
--Wm. Gibson, 1988


SWARM
First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1982.

"I will miss your conversation during the rest of the voyage," the alien said.
Captain-Doctor Simon Afriel folded his jeweled hands over his gold-embroidered waistcoat.
"I regret it also, ensign," he said in the alien's own hissing language. "Our talks together have
been very useful to me, I would have paid to learn so much, but you gave it freely."
"But that was only information," the alien said. He shrouded his bead-bright eyes behind thick
nictitating membranes. "We Investors deal in energy, and precious metals. To prize and pursue
mere knowledge is an immature racial trait." The alien lifted the long ribbed frill behind his
pinhole-sized ears.
"No doubt you are right," Afriel said, despising him. "We humans are as children to other
races, however; so a certain immaturity seems natural to us." Afriel pulled off his sunglasses to
rub the bridge of his nose. The starship cabin was drenched in searing blue light, heavily