"Michael Swanwick - Mother Grasshopper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

between the stars.

"-- cisgalactic phase intercept," she said. "Do you read? Das Uberraumboot
zuruckgegenerinnernte. Verstehen? Anadaemonic mesotechnological conflict
strategizing. Drei tausenden Allen mit Laseren! Hello? Is anybody --"

Then she stumbled over a rock, cried out in pain, and said, "Where am I ?"

I stopped, spread a map on the ground, and got out my pocket gravitometer. It
was a simple thing: a glass cylinder filled with aerogel and a bright orange
ceramic bead. The casing was tin, with a compressor screw at the top, a
calibrated scale along the side, and the words "Flynn & Co." at the bottom. I
flipped it over, watched the bead slowly fall. I tightened the screw a notch,
then two, then three, increasing the aerogel's density. At five, the bead
stopped. I read the gauge, squinted up at the sun, and then jabbed a finger on
an isobar to one edge of the map.

"Right here," I said. "Just off the lens. See?"

"I don't --" She was trembling with panic. Her dilated eyes shifted wildly from
one part of the empty horizon to another. Then suddenly, sourcelessly, she burst
into tears.

Embarrassed, I looked away. When she was done crying I patted the ground. "Sit."
Sniffling, she obeyed. "How old are you, Victoria?"

"How old am...? Sixteen?" she said tentatively. "Seventeen?" Then, "Is that
really my name?"

"It was. The woman you were grew tired of life, and injected herself with a drug
that destroys the ego and with it all trace of personal history." I sighed. "So
in one sense you're still Victoria, and in another sense you're not. What she
did was illegal, though; you can never go back to the oculus. You'd be locked
into jail for the rest of your life."

She looked at me through eyes newly young, almost childlike in their experience,
and still wet with tears. I was prepared for hysteria, grief, rage. But all she
said was, "Are you a magician?"

That rocked me back on my heels. "Well -- yes," I said. "I suppose I am."

She considered that silently for a moment. "So what happens to me now?"

"Your job is to carry that pack. We also go turn-on-turn with the dishes." I
straightened, folding the map. "Come on. We've got a far way yet to go."
We commenced marching, in silence at first. But then, not many miles down the
road and to my complete astonishment, Victoria began to sing!

We followed the faintest of paths -- less a trail than the memory of a dream of
the idea of one -- across the chitin. Alongside it grew an occasional patch of