"Charles Stross - Tarkovsky's Cut" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Tarkovsky's Cut
by Charles Stross

Once a lifetime Jewel swims in the Folded Rose lagoon. She strikes out through the mirror-still
water until she can just make out the Hub wall, and then she swims a little further. She lies back
in the water and lets things pass her by for a while. On a clear day she can just make out, directly
above, the fields and forests she explored as a cild. She smiles, and maps the vague topology,
sharpening it with memories.

Then, for the first time in many years, she turns off her Wisdom, and thinks back, unaided, to
what it was like. The feel of landpussy fur. The strong savour of barbecued cockroach. The first
exquisite tickle of the Wisdom uplink behind her eyes. She swims in memories and falls like a
stone, into childhood, and into the black depths of the lake.

Now Jewel is an old woman again, nearing the end of her fortieth lifetime, and she is ready to
swim again.

She stands on the foredeck of the houseboat, fingering the jewel, which hangs on a silver chain
about her neck.

The craft turns in the water, and Jewel watches as the Hub -- a craggy, rust-stained rock wall --
swings into view. She looks up, and up and up. The rocks climb all the way to the forests of her
childhood -- there, on the opposite side of the oneil. The Hub's fault lines and discolorations are
not, like the lagoon, a builder's whim. They are real. The Heaven Eleven oneil is ten thousand
years old.

The houseboat is anchored to a smaller, grey and scree-swept slope, which curves so that its
lips meet the hub at either edge, forming a pouch some five hundred feet above the lagoon. In it lie
the remains of an ancient city and there, built over their ruined heart, stands the Folded Rose
Sanctuary. There are no landward approaches to the Sanctuary. The slopes, naturally rugged and
inhospitable, have been seeded with things lethal to man. Birdmen patrol the rocky crests,
watching for airborne intruders with senses enhanced by a secret process.

Jewel stretches in satisfaction and turns to the wrought-iron table. On it stands a small glass
cafetiere. She presses down on the filter arm and watches the brew darken. She pours herself a
cup and sits down. Soon she will have to go and kill her wife. As always, the thought of it excites
her.

She sips her coffee. They feed coffee berries to Wolfmen. As the berries are digested, so the
beans within them partly ferment. It has become a kind of ritual -- to drink wolf coffee before killing
her lovers.

Jewel opens a small bottle of hash oil and slurs it into her coffee. The scent is delicious.

She drinks, and rides the slow, gentle hashish swell into the First House of Contemplation.

She fingers the jewel around her neck. It has seventy facets -- one for each of her lives.

She thinks of her wife, and of their lovemaking. Marget's breasts are small and too far apart and
her orgasm is a raucous laugh. The taste of her wetness is rich and sickly.