"Charles Stross - Red, Hot and Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

"Don't worry." Moving down the corridor towards his office, the student following him:
Oleg had things on his mind. "Have you got a few minutes?"

"For you, professor?" The student's elaborate shrug was wasted. Oleg was too busy
unlocking his office to notice.

"These filing cabinets. Do me a favour, get everything out of the top drawer there,
stacked in order, and put it on the table. Please? I'll make it worth your while."

"How worthwhile?" Something nudged Oleg's attention, but when he looked up Anatoly
looked back at him innocently. "A regrading?"

"You said it, not me." Anatoly turned to the filing cabinet eagerly. "Now if you will excuse
me --"

The terminal on Oleg's desk was an antique, but it still connected him to the machines in
the basement. To his surprise, Oleg found that his palms were sweating as he sat down
and logged on. This has gone too far. He shivered and glanced over his shoulder. If
Andrei gets his grubby hands on these there won't be an excuse under heaven that'll save
me! Still he hesitated. Something in the air tickled his nostrils; scent of woodsmoke and
gasoline far away, screams remembered in the moonless night. From her. Behind him,
Anatoly was systematically stripping his files from their steel nest. Oh well. It had to
happen -- now or later.

Oleg began to type, carefully -- the sluggardly machine could barely keep up with his
keypresses -- a short e-mail message. He stared at it for a few minutes after he finished
it, trying to understand what he had done. To KGBVAX, the police monitor on the net.
User: Valentin016. An anonymous label. Danger. He'd been sweating before he started.
Now he pressed enter, consigning the message to the invisible guts of the connected
mainframes, where it would find it's way eventually to the destination --

To Valentina. Who'd know what to do, if anyone did. Oleg logged out and turned round,
stood up and stretched, stared at the student working on his files. Time to think about
avoiding Andrei. Why did I ever let it get this far? he wondered. Hands deep in pockets,
he wandered over to the window and stared out towards the distant Kremlin. Dancing
with the devil ...

Twenty five years ago:
Oleg had first met Andrei back in sixty-three, sixty-four, back when he had been a young
student of astrophysics, fresh in from the sticks. Always the terrified compulsion to look
up at the stars -- attending Shklovskii's bull sessions about intelligent life in the universe
made him feel out of control, his thin veneer of sophistication in danger of cracking open
to reveal the depths of his superstitious fear. The feeling had a shuddery attraction to
Oleg, who was unable to join in the merry banter of his colleagues.

"You see, comrades, if we are not alone in the universe, the very fact of our lack of
uniqueness has implications for our way of life! No longer are we part of an isolated,
unique trend. Other intelligences, once their existence can be proven, would provide a
powerful stimulus to our exploratory tendencies. Such intelligences, should they be more
advanced than us, may be expected to be in constant communication even if physical