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

open-vacuum storage, awaiting possible salvage. Ten
kilometers out, a pressurized van had exploded,
scattering machine parts and giant worms of insulating
foam across the landscape. At twenty-five kilometers,
a poorly graded stretch of road had claimed any number
of cargo skids and shattered running lights from
passing traffic.
Forty kilometers out, though, the road was clear, a
straight, clean gash in the dirt. Ignoring the voices
at the back of his skull, the traffic chatter and
automated safety messages that the truck routinely fed
into his transceiver chip, he scrolled up the
topographicals on the dash.
Right about here.
Gunther turned off the Mare Vaporum road and began
laying tracks over virgin soil. "You've left your
prescheduled route," the truck said. "Deviations from
schedule may only be made with the recorded permission
of your dispatcher."
"Yeah, well." Gunther's voice seemed loud in his
helmet, the only physical sound in a babel of ghosts.
He'd left the cabin unpressurized, and the insulated
layers of his suit stilled even the conduction rumbling
from the treads. "You and I both know that so long as
I don't fall too far behind schedule, Beth Hamilton
isn't going to care if I stray a little in between."
"You have exceeded this unit's linguistic
capabilities."
"That's okay, don't let it bother you." Deftly he
tied down the send switch on the truck radio with a
twist of wire. The voices in his head abruptly died.
He was completely isolated now.
"You said you wouldn't do that again." The words,
broadcast directly to his trance chip, sounded as deep
and resonant as the voice of God. "Generation Five
policy expressly requires that all drivers maintain
constant radio--"
"Don't whine. It's unattractive."
"You have exceeded this unit's linguistic--"
"Oh, shut up." Gunther ran a finger over the
topographical maps, tracing the course he'd plotted the
night before: Thirty kilometers over cherry soil,
terrain no human or machine had ever crossed before,
and then north on Murchison road. With luck he might
even manage to be at Chatterjee early.
He drove into the lunar plain. Rocks sailed by to
either side. Ahead, the mountains grew imperceptibly.
Save for the treadmarks dwindling behind him, there was
nothing from horizon to horizon to show that humanity
had ever existed. The silence was perfect.