"Charles Stross - Scratch Monkey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

BANG!
I look up. The first aerobrake has deployed, detonating high overhead: I switch my peripheral
nervous system back on and experience a shivery high of visceral fear. The sky is swinging back
and forth above me like a pendulum as the machmeter drops towards One, and then I'm falling
subsonic, altitude two thousand metres and the counter timing down to impact. There's a gurgle
and my ears ring as the suspension gel liquifies and drains away.
-- Three, two, one. Suddenly a giant hand grabs me around the shoulders and buttocks. I'm flying
high on a gossamer kite, wings outstretched above me. I look down and there's nothing under the
capsule but a vast expanse of green, slashed in half by the ochre gash of a dirt trail. My stomach
does a backflip as I reach out and grab the side-arm controller. Two heartbeats and the ground
disappears behind a wisp of low cloud, but I've got no time to waste daydreaming: I'm gliding
down to an alien forest and I've got just three minutes flying time left. The capsule handles like a
brick; it's carrying enough fuel to make orbit.
Right, I think. Where do I land?
I'm down to one thousand metres so I risk a quick flash on radar. There are no metal structures
out there so I decide the road's as safe as anywhere -- this is rainforest country, my briefing
whispers in my head, and I don't want the wingsail to get wrapped up in the trees. (A brief vision
flashes before my eyes; a skeleton in a stealth capsule gently sways in the breeze beneath a
canopy of tree bearing strange fruit, while Year Zero Man continues to play his deadly game and
the distortions in the Dreamtime get worse.) Year Zero Man is a murderous bastard: killing so
many people that - the activity surge in the Dreamtime was measurable at a range of fifteen light
years --
The dusty road is coming up beneath me as I trigger the capsule motor (for just a tenth of a
second -- I don't want to set fire to the forest) and dump the wingsail. It drifts gracefully away
and the capsule drifts gently down between smoke-fumed tree trunks. I can see burning
vegetation as there's a jarring thump from below. The rocket shuts off. Quick! Move! The canopy
retracts and the thermal tiles are still hot beneath my boots as I jump down and turn -- to see a
large deadfall which, if I look at it carefully, might almost be the silhouette of a parked orbiter
capsule.
I lumber through the undergrowth, out onto the road, trot along to the wingsail (which has come
down right in the most visible damn spot in the forest). The fabric billows and it's obviously
entangled in the undergrowth, but that's no problem. I duck down behind it, pull out a ring pull,
and stand back. The sail begins to dissolve. I look round again, see a confused tangle of
undergrowth and anonymous tree-trunks. It's going to be easy to lose the capsule here, so I gash
the tree-trunk with an armoured finger and retreat about ten metres back from the road. Then I
check the time. It's been eleven minutes since I left the station. That's too slow; if this was a
network-ready world they'd have been all over me ten minutes ago. What's up with these people?
How primitive are they?
As I wait for the soldiers to arrive, I strip off my suit and bury it. It takes a minute or two for the
suit's sensitive control systems to disentangle themselves from my spinal cord and viscera, then
the bolts begin to slide back into their sockets and the segments of armour begin to slough off
like the skin of a ceramic snake. The jungle air is a rich compost smell overlaid with the acrid
tang of the dissolving wingsail. Now I look at them, the plants are really strange. All their
branches come in threes, and the leaves are more blue than green: something chitters in the
undergrowth nearby and the insects rasp like a chorus of malfunctioning drones. I shrug out of
my dismembered suit, stand bare-ass naked but for my built-in extras, and look around. There's
no-one watching, so I disentangle my knapsack from the supply locker in the back of the life
support unit. I open it and drag out a grey overall, rough-woven sandals, and a small moneybelt
that bulges. I put them on, wearing the belt inside the suit. I don't know if I look like a native, but
frankly I don't really care. What I care about is not looking like trouble, and the armour is more