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

smashed, small but perfect and whole. And growing. She could not
imagine by what process this could be happening. Electrodeposition?
Molecular sulfur being drawn up from the soil in some kind of
pseudocapillary action? Were the flowers somehow plucking sulfur ions
from Io's almost nonexistent atmosphere?
Yesterday, the questions would have excited her. Now, her capacity for
wonder was nonexistent. Moreover, her instruments were back in the
moonrover. Save for the suit's limited electronics, she had nothing to take
measurements with. She had only herself, the sledge, the spare airpacks,
and the corpse.
"Damn, damn, damn," she muttered. On the one hand, this was a
dangerous place to stay in. On the other, she'd been awake almost twenty
hours now and she was dead on her feet. Exhausted. So very, very tired.
"O sleep! It is a gentle thing. Beloved from pole to pole. Coleridge."
Which, God knows, was tempting. But the numbers were clear: no
sleep. With several deft chin-taps, Martha overrode her suit's safeties and
accessed its medical kit. At her command, it sent a hit of
methamphetamine rushing down the drug/vitamin catheter.
There was a sudden explosion of clarity in her skull and her heart began
pounding like a jackhammer. Yeah. That did it. She was full of energy
now. Deep breath. Long stride. Let's go.
No rest for the wicked. She had things to do. She left the flowers rapidly
behind. Good-bye, Oz.

Fade out. Fade in. Hours had glided by. She was walking through a
shadowy sculpture garden. Volcanic pillars (these were their second great
discovery; they had no exact parallel on Earth) were scattered across the
pyroclastic plain like so many isolated Lipschitz statues. They were all
rounded and heaped, very much in the style of rapidly cooled magma.
Martha remembered that Burton was dead, and cried quietly to herself for
a few minutes.
Weeping, she passed through the eerie stone forms. The speed made
them shift and move in her vision. As if they were dancing. They looked
like women to her, tragic figures out of The Bacchae or, no, wait, The
Trojan Women was the play she was thinking of. Desolate. Filled with
anguish. Lonely as Lot's wife.
There was a light scattering of sulfur dioxide snow on the ground here.
It sublimed at the touch of her boots, turning to white mist and scattering
wildly, the steam disappearing with each stride and then being renewed
with the next footfall. Which only made the experience all that much
creepier.
Click.
"Io has a metallic core predominantly of iron and iron sulfide, overlain
by a mantle of partially molten rock and crust."
"Are you still here?"
"Am trying. To communicate."
"Shut up."
She topped the ridge. The plains ahead were smooth and undulating.
They reminded her of the Moon, in the transitional region between Mare
Serenitatis and the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, where she had