"Bruce Sterling - Islands In The Net" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Islands in the Net

by Bruce Sterling

1

The sea lay in simmering quiet, a slate-green gumbo
seasoned with warm mud. Shrimp boats trawled the horizon.
Pilings rose in clusters, like blackened fingers, yards out in
the gentle surf. Once, Galveston beach homes had crouched
on those tar-stained stilts. Now barnacles clustered there, gulls
wheeled and screeched. It was a great breeder of hurricanes,
this quiet Gulf of Mexico.
Laura read her time and distance with a quick downward
glance. Green indicators blinked on the toes. of her shoes,
flickering with each stride, counting mileage. Laura picked
up the pace. Morning shadows strobed across her as she ran.
She passed the last of the pilings and spotted her home, far
down the beach. She grinned as fatigue evaporated in a flare.
of energy.
Everything seemed worth it. When the second wind took
her, she felt that she could run forever, a promise of inde-
structible confidence bubbling up from the marrow. She ran
in pure animal ease, like an antelope.
The beach leapt up and slammed against her.
Laura lay stunned for a moment. She lifted her head, then
caught her breath and groaned. Her cheek was caked with
sand, both elbows numbed with the impact of the fall. Her
arms trembled as she pushed herself up onto her knees. She
looked behind her.
Something had snagged her foot. It was a black, peeling
length of electrical cable. Junked flotsam from the hurricane,
buried in the sand. The wire had whiplashed around her left
ankle and brought her down as neatly as a lariat.
She rolled over and sat, breathing hard, and kicked the
loosened wire off her shoe. The broken skin above her sock
had just begun to bleed, and the first cold shock gave way to
hot smarting pain.
She stood up and threw off the shakiness, brushing sand
from her cheek and arms. Sand had scratched the plastic
screen of her watchphone. Its wrist strap was caked with grit.
"Great," Laura said. A belated rush of anger brought her
strength back. She bent and pulled at the cable, hard. Four
feet of wet sand furrowed up.
She looked around for a stick or a chunk of driftwood to
dig with. The beach, as usual, was conspicuously clean. But
Laura refused to leave this filthy snag- to trip some tourist.
That wouldn't do at all-not on her beach. Stubbornly, she
knelt down and dug with her hands.
She followed the frayed cord half a foot down, to the