"Michael Swanwick - Griffins Egg" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

Copyright ┬й 1990 by Michael Swanwick, All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with St. Martin's
Press. For the personal use of those who have purchased the ESF 1993 Award anthology in the United
States of America only.




GRIFFIN'S EGG

Michael Swanwick



The moon? It is a griffin's egg,
Hatching to-morrow night.
And how the little boys will watch
With shouting and delight
To see him break the shell and stretch
And creep across the sky.
The boys will laugh. The little girls,
I fear, may hide and cry . . .

VACHEL LINDSAY


This book is dedicated to the Loud Philadelphians:
Tess Kissinger, Bob Walters, Susan Casper, Gardner Dozois, Marianne
Porter, Mike Ford emeritus, Greg Frost, Joanne Burke, David Axler, Ray
Ridenour (hon.), Tim Sullivan emeritus, and occasionally Janet and Karl
Kofoed.




The sun cleared the mountains. Gunther Weil raised a
hand in salute, then winced as the glare hit his eyes
in the instant it took his helmet to polarize.
He was hauling fuel rods to Chatterjee Crater
industrial park. The Chatterjee B reactor had gone
critical forty hours before dawn, taking fifteen
remotes and a microwave relay with it, and putting out
a power surge that caused collateral damage to every
factory in the park. Fortunately, the occasional
meltdown was designed into the system. By the time the
sun rose over the Rhaeticus highlands, a new reactor
had been built and was ready to go online.
Gunther drove automatically, gauging his distance
from Bootstrap by the amount of trash lining the Mare
Vaporum road. Close by the city, discarded
construction machinery and damaged assemblers sat in