"Michael Swanwick - Radiant Doors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998


Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's
Science Fiction, September 1998. Nominated for Best Short Story.

The doors began opening on a Tuesday in early March. Only a few at
firstтАУflickering and uncertain because they were operating at the extreme end of
their temporal rangeтАУand those few from the earliest days of the exodus, releasing
fugitives who were unstarved and healthy, the privileged scientists and
technicians who had created or appropriated the devices that made their escape
possible. We processed about a hundred a week, in comfortable isolation and
relative secrecy. There were videocams taping everything, and our own best
people madly scribbling notes and holding seminars and teleconferences where
they debated the revelations.

Those were, in retrospect, the good old days.

In April the floodgates swung wide. Radiant doors opened everywhere,
disgorging torrents of ragged and fearful refugees. There were millions of them
and they had every one, to the least and smallest child, been horribly, horribly
abused. The stories they told were enough to sicken anyone. I know.

We did what we could. We set up camps. We dug latrines. We ladled out soup. It
was a terrible financial burden to the host governments, but what else could they
do? The refugees were our descendants. In a very real sense, they were our
children.

Throughout that spring and summer, the flow of refugees continued to grow. As
the cumulative worldwide total ran up into the tens of millions, the authorities
were beginning to panicтАУwas this going to go on forever, a plague of human
locusts that would double and triple and quadruple the population, overrunning
the land and devouring all the food? What measures might we be forced to take if
this kept up? The planet was within a lifetime of its loading capacity as it was. It
couldn't take much more. Then in August the doors simply ceased. Somebody up
in the future had put an absolute and final end to them.


file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Michael%20Swanwick%20-%20Radiant%20Doors.htm (1 of 21) [12/30/2004 8:07:58 PM]
 Radiant Doors by Michael Swanwick This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998


It didn't bear thinking what became of those who hadn't made it through.

"More tales from the burn ward," Shriver said, ducking through the door flap.
That was what he called atrocity stories. He dumped the files on my desk and
leaned forward so he could leer down my blouse. I scowled him back a step.

"Anything useful in them?"