"Michael Swanwick - The Very Pulse Of The Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

pause. "Wordsworth."
Which, except for the halting delivery, was so much like Burton, with
her classical education and love of classical poets like Spenser and
Ginsberg and Plath, that for a second Martha was taken aback. Burton
was a terrible poetry bore, but her enthusiasm had been genuine, and now
Martha was sorry for every time she'd met those quotations with rolled
eyes or a flip remark. But there'd be time enough for grieving later. Right
now she had to concentrate on the task at hand.
The colors of the plain were dim and brownish. With a few quick
chin-taps, she cranked up their intensity. Her vision filled with yellows,
oranges, redsтАФintense wax crayon colors. Martha decided she liked them
best that way.
For all its Crayola vividness, this was the most desolate landscape in the
universe. She was on her own here, small and weak in a harsh and
unforgiving world. Burton was dead. There was nobody else on all of Io.
Nobody to rely on but herself. Nobody to blame if she fucked up. Out of
nowhere, she was filled with an elation as cold and bleak as the distant
mountains. It was shameful how happy she felt.
After a minute, she said, "Know any songs?"

Oh the bear went over the mountain. The bear went over the mountain.
The bear went over the mountain. To see what he could see.
"Wake. Up. Wake. Up."
To see what he couldтАФ
"Wake. Up. Wake. Up. Wake."
"Hah? What?"
"Crystal sulfur is orthorhombic."
She was in a field of sulfur flowers. They stretched as far as the eye
could see, crystalline formations the size of her hand. Like the poppies of
Flanders field. Or the ones in The Wizard of Oz. Behind her was a trail of
broken flowers, some crushed by her feet or under the weight of the sledge,
others simply exploded by exposure to her suit's waste heat. It was far
from being a straight path. She had been walking on autopilot, and
stumbled and turned and wandered upon striking the crystals.
Martha remembered how excited she and Burton had been when they
first saw the fields of crystals. They had piled out of the moonrover with
laughter and bounding leaps, and Burton had seized her by the waist and
waltzed her around in a dance of jubilation. This was the big one, they'd
thought, their chance at the history books. And even when they'd radioed
Hols back in the orbiter and were somewhat condescendingly informed
that there was no chance of this being a new life-form, but only sulfide
formations such as could be found in any mineralogy text... even that had
not killed their joy. It was still their first big discovery. They'd looked
forward to many more.
 Now, though, all she could think of was the fact that such crystal fields
occurred in regions associated with sulfur geysers, lateral plumes, and
volcanic hot spots.
Something funny was happening to the far edge of the field, though. She
cranked up her helmet to extreme magnification and watched as the trail
slowly erased itself. New flowers were rising up in place of those she had