"Charles Stross - Iron Sunrise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

gravity; she could turn her head sharply without feeling dizzy, and her feet felt like lead. Climbing
would be painfully slow at first, the Coriolis force a constant tug trying to pull her sideways off the
ladder to safety.
Dim lighting panels glowed along the ceiling, turned down to Moonlight Seven. The vines in the small
hubgarden at the center of the crossroads drooped, suffering already from eighteen hours of darkness.
Everything down here was dead or dying, like the body she'd found in the public toilet two decks up and
three segments over. When she realized the dog was still on her tail she'd headed back home to the
apartment she'd shared with her parents and younger brother, hoping the scent would confuse the hound
while she sneaked away onto one of the other evacuation ships. But now she was trapped down here
with it, and what she should really have done was head for the traffic control offices and barricade the

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 IRON SUNRISE - Charles Stross


doorsтАФ
Her training nudged her forward. This sector was given over to administration offices, station police,
customs and trade monitors, and the small clump of services that fed them during their work shifts.
Darkened office doorways hung open, unattended, dust already gathering on chairs and desks. Very
deliberately, she stepped into the police station. Behind the counter a public notice poster scrolled
endlessly, STATION CLOSED. Grunting with effort, she clambered over the chest-high barrier, then
rolled down behind it.
The antique leather satchel Herman had told her to take banged against her hip; she cursed it and what it
had brought her to. It was half-full of paper: rich, slightly creamy fabric-weave paper, written on with
real ink that didn't swim and mutate into different fonts when you stroked the margin. Dumb matter, the
sort of medium you used when you really, really didn't want some tame infowar worm to unpick your
traffic. Nestled at the bottom of the bag was a locked cassette full of molecular storageтАФrecords from
the station customs post. Records that somebody thought were important enough to kill for.
She twitched a ring, dialing the lights up to Twilight Three, and looked around the cop shop. She'd been
there once before, when Constable Barca had given her year a tour of the premises. That had been a
pointed adult hint about how to stay out of trouble. Things were different now, the offices and detention
areas and waiting rooms all gaping like empty sockets in a skull. The administration thought they knew
all about teenagers, but they were wrong. She'd seen the locked cupboard in the ready room and got Pete
to front a question about it: sticky foam and pepper gas, breathing masks and handcuffs in case of civil
disorder. In case of riot, break glass. Old Newfie was mostly peaceful; there'd been just one murder and
only a handful of fights in the past thirty years. Admin thought a SWAT team was what you sent to deal
with a wasp's nest in a ventilation duct. She paused at the locked cabinet, dumped the satchel, and
grabbed something that looked more useful.
Claws rattled on the floor outside the office, and paused.


IMPACT: T plus 1392 days, 17 hours, 30 minutes
"What do you mean, she's missing?" Constable Ito said irritably. "Can't you keep your children underтАФ"
The tall, stooped man ran his fingers through his thinning hair. "If you had kidsтАФno, I'm sorry! Look,
she's not here. I know she has a shipboard badge because I pinned it on her jacket myself, all right? She's
not here, and I'm afraid she might have gone back home or something."
"Home?" Ito pushed his visor up and stared at the worried father. "She couldn't be that stupid. Could


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