"Michael Swanwick - Trojan Horse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

Blinking hard, she looked away from the island, down into the jet-black waters of the lake. The brighter
stars were reflected there. A slight breeze rippled the water, making them twinkle and blink, as if lodged
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in a Terran sky. They floated lightly on the surface, swarmed and coalesced, and formed Tory's face in
the lake. He smiled warmly, invitingly.



A hand closed around her arm, and she looked up into the stern face of a security guard. "You're drunk,
Ms.," he said, "and you're endangering property."



She looked where he pointed, at a young yam plant she had squashed when she sat down, and began to
laugh. Smoothly, professionally, the guard rolled up her sleeve, clamped a plastic bracelet around her
wrist. "Time to go," he said.



By the time the guard had walked Elin up four terraces, she was nearly sober. A steady trickle of her
blood wound through the bracelet, was returned to her body cleansed of alcohol. A sacrilegious waste of
wine, in her opinion.



In another twenty steps, the bracelet fell off her wrist. The guard snapped it neatly from the air and
disappeared. Despair closed in on her again. Tory, my love! And since there was no hope of sleep, she
kept on trudging up the terraces, back toward Hans's rathskeller, for another bellyful of wine.



There was a small crowd seated about the rock that served Hans as a table, lit by a circle of
hologram-generated fairy lights. Father Landis was there, and drinking heavily. "To-morrow I file my
report," she announced. "The synod is pulling out of this, withdrawing funding."



Hans sighed, took a long swig of his own wine, winced at its taste. "I guess that's it for the Star Maker
project, huh?"



Landis crossed her fingers. "Pray God." Elin, standing just outside the circle, stood silently, listening.