"Michael Swanwick - Vacumn Flowers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

bloom the size of a human head, but so fragile it crumpled
to nothing at the touch of a gloved finger.
The sense of Other remained, though, until her entire
back itched with the touch of imagined eyes and she
glanced back over her shoulder.
There was no one there. Just a stretch of bare rock and
harsh shadow and, in the distance, a few low utility
buildings and several freight lots. The lots were simply
areas where the rock had been ground flat for storage
purposes. Some were vacant. On others, orange and green
and yellow crates were piled skyscraper-high. Machines
as delicately jointed as mosquitos climbed the stacks,
adding and removing crates. Below them, vacuum bums
wrestled more crates from magnetic cushions or into
elevators, standing back as the cargo was flung up and
away.
What are you hanging around for? Rebel thought
angrily. She felt like crying, but sternly suppressed the
urgeтАФtears were a bitch in vacuum gear. I wonтАЩt step aside
for you. This is my mind now.
A scrap of trash lightly hit the surface near Rebel,
bounced up, and floated slowly downward, orange and red
and twinkling. A crushed bit of packaging for something
that had been consumed somewhere in near orbit. Rebel
reached down, tried to gather too many blossoms at once,
and received a small shock through her work gloves as the
flowers shorted out. тАЬOh, shit!тАЭ She flung the things down
in disgust and sat up. A cannister city was lifting up over
the flower-bright horizon. She could see a random scatter
of habitat lights through a window wall, small and bright,
like inner stars. And now it came to Rebel that she was on
the strange planet she had seen from the hospital. Eros.
She was on the asteroid Eros in the center of Eros Kluster.
Just like that, EucrasiaтАЩs ghost was gone, vanished like a
bubble in vacuum.
Rebel looped her bagтАЩs tieline over a rock outcrop, pulled
it snug, and rolled over on her back, letting the light wash
over and through her.
Staring into the Kluster, she again felt mingled
familiarity and awe. Spread against the starscape was an
artificial galaxy of spinning wheels, variable gravity
factories, geodesic towns, warehousing grids, slagsided
cylinders, farming spheresтАж an infinity of structures, all
painted in miles-wide supergraphics and bright as small
suns. Counterspinward, to the KlusterтАЩs trailing edge, the
arrays of refinery mirrors were awash in waste light.
Starward, robot lightsails tacked and lofted, bringing in
semiprocessed ores. Closeby, access craft and
vacuum-suited spacejacks twisted through thin lines of
traffic holograms. For an instant she almost choked on the