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

"Half an hour."

What? Sorry, can you use Wisdom, I've got no ears now.

Alia puts her hands over her face. Half an hour. Then, after a moment's silence, You were my
favourite.

I loved you, too, the drain replies, and for the first time in her seven lifetimes, Alia weeps.

Jewel celebrates her rebirth in style. First she finds a lover. She does not like carrying over
lovers from one lifetime to the next. It never seems to work, and those who live too closely to her
for too long learn things it is best for them not to know.

Marget died beautifully. No blood, no bruise, she fell like a doll with broken strings. Jewel smiles
and looks around her at her new apartment.

It is as wide as the Sanctuary itself. She cannot see the far wall. It is decorated in brilliant
blue-white, offset by soft pastel greys and pinks. To her left, by the window, hand printed silk
curtains shiver in the air-conditioner breeze. Outside lies the whole shattered vista of the Old City.
As she watches, strong winds blow cement dust into the air about the buildings, softening the
outlines of the smashed landscape, reinterpreting the scene in impressionistic grey pastel, and
the outside seems distanced, like something taken from film or from memory.

The furniture is upholstered in pale leather and velvet -- all soft, sea-curved lines, no sharp
angles anywhere. The carpet is thick steel-blue shag.

Out the corner of her eye, Jewel glimpses white silk brushing the arm of a chaise-longue. White
silk -- sleeved round a white arm. Jewel surveys the figure reclined upon the couch.

The flesh of her arms is the colour of bleached bone. She wears a sari, tightened by velcro
fasteners to accentuate the generous curves of breast and hip. Her hair is a white dandelion
clock, an even three inches over her pale skull. Her eyes are black pits, no iris visible: in each
ivory orb a gaping hole.

"Hyne. Leave me."

Hyne obeys. She is a retread, and has been conditioned to do everything asked of her. This
conditioning will wear off in a matter of months, but by then Jewel will know how to manipulate
her.
 Alone in the room, Jewel plays with the seventy-facetted diamond about her neck. After a
minute or two, she gets up and opens her cupboard. There are skeletons inside it. She speaks to
one of them.

"Jessie?"

The skull, nested with nutrient feeds to supply the braindrain within, blinks at her -- red millipedal
wipers polish cybernetic lenses. "I loved her," it says. through a grill where its lower jaw should
be.

Jewel nods patiently. "Alia is a vibrant personality. It's a pity she and her brood are trying to kill