"Mark W. Tiedemann - Miserond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiedemann Mark W)

Miserond
Mark W. Tiedemann


Gil Citares hurried down the curving corridor, trying to catch up to the compact, dark woman ten paces ahead of him. She had cut her time short coming by his cabin to bring him along. Gil was grateful; he liked being present when fresh shipments came from the outer ring, though they were all the same.
"We've got about twenty seconds to spare," Jesca Rimin called over her shoulder as they entered the receiving lock. "We haven't slowed the ring yet." She flashed him a smile and his face tingled with pleasure.
The lock was a long room, split lengthwise by a thick transparency that separated the control console and various other apparatus from the receiving stage. The gate itself was a large featureless gray oval at the far edge of the stage. Jesca stepped up to the console and began working controls.
"Seal the door, would you?" she asked.
Gil turned to the exit and touched the switch. The door slid shut and sealed itself. As he turned back a voice echoed in the chamber, and throughout the ring.
"Attention. Ring deceleration will commence in fifteen seconds. Minus C protocols are in force. Stay where you are, do not wander the corridors until the all clear after acceleration."
The warning repeated twice more.
Jesca worked quickly, trying to make up lost time. She had cut it too close coming by his room. On the other side of the transparency, twin sets of columns moved out from the bulkheads to flank the portal. Energy soaks.
"We're decelerating," she said. The deck began to vibrate. A deep resonant hum permeated the air. Jesca checked her console.
"Velocities matched," Jesca said. She glanced up at the dark oval. "Corridor formingЕ"
As Gil watched, the flat gray began to break up, lighten in patches, until it was nearly white. Then it flashed briefly as the boundary was breached and corridor photons burst into the receiving chamber. The oval was haloed now, so bright it hurt to look at it. Gil squinted into the glare, barely diminished by the polarizing of the transparency.
Gil licked his lips nervously. The sound grew, the vibration increased. Ghost lights flickered at the edge of his vision. Suddenly a shape emerged from the brightness, moved forward slowly, and seemed to drift into the chamber. Behind that another one appeared.
"That's it," Jesca said finally. "Five crates." She touched one more switch and the brilliance began to fade. "Okay, Damon," she spoke into her console mic, "bring us back up to speed."
The portal resumed its flat gray seamlessness, leaving behind the five large coffinlike objects. The vibration diminished with the sound and, somehow, Gil felt more solid.
"Acceleration complete," the PA announced, "resume normal operations."
When the energy soaks cooled down the hot crates, Jesca opened the access through the transparency and stepped into the receiving theatre. Gil followed her in and together they began unlatching the dogs on the lids.
As he went from crate to crate, glancing cursorily over the manifest enclosed in eachЧdatachits, new clothes, a shipment of wine, other consumablesЧhis attention returned constantly to the portal. It had the look of a solid nothing, a hard emptiness that seemed simultaneously here and elsewhere. In a sense it was constantly open. Theoretically Gil could step through it. But the conditional nature of the ring made it a conditional reality. Given certain conditions, the portal was passable. Under prevailing conditionsЧthe ring up to speed, the corridor unformed to the outer ringЧthere simply existed nowhere to pass through the portal to.
The staff had sent probes through, though, from time to time, just to see. No data had returned.
Being so close was disturbing. He shook his head and unlatched the last crate. The lid hissed open.
A man sat up, blinking. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Gil stared, transfixed, until the man lowered his hands and looked up. He blinked at Gil for a few seconds, then looked at Jesca.
"I didn't know we were expecting new personnel," she said.
"I'm a replacement," he said. "I need to see Jesca Rimin."
Jesca frowned. "I'm Jesca Rimin."
"I'mЧ" He pushed up out of the coffin, grunted. "My name is Ivelor. I need to see Gil Citares, too."
"I'm Citares."
"I'd like to speak to both of you. Privately."
"Finally," Gil said.


Gil sat alone in the observation chamber, immersed in the qualities of blackness on the panels before him. He had known darkness most of his life and sometimes, when especially masochistic and despondent, he had marveled at its varieties, from the bleak lightlessness of defeat to the electric storms of helpless rage. Black coffee, intractable mud, scorching tar, oil-tainted ice, waste smokeЧall black in different ways, signifying different feelings, each marking a file in his memory of different places and people. But he had never seen a black like the one at the center of the ring.
The chamber was lit the color of a backlit bruise, blue and purple, from the play of doomed energies that crossed the panels in washes like storm clouds speeded up a thousand times. The graveyard of all matter, particles poured to destruction into the impossible bucket the ring encircled, a bucket shaped by the geometries of infinite stress. Gil had once wondered if the universe was alive, sentient. Perhaps not, he still had no answer, but, like the inmost hidden part of a human, the universe had a soul and it was just as lightless.
No one, Gil knew, ever saw another person's soul. What they saw, what they thought was the soul, was a reconstruction, a projection assembled through the medium of intellect and emotion. And like the images he now watched, equally false.
A door slid quietly open behind him.
In the upper left-hand corner of the display a splash of crimson light erupted.
"GilЕ?"
Slowly, he twisted his head around to look up at Jesca, indistinct in the dark. Gil smiled and sighed. He patted the chair beside him, inviting. Jesca stepped down, sat.
"I'm being recalled," she said.
"Oh?"
"I didn't plan for this. I never intended to leave."
I know, Gil thought, and carefully said, "Maybe they'll send you back. Maybe they just want to ask some questions."
Gil sensed her shaking her head. He found her hand and held it.
"I might be gone a day, an hour, a year," she said. "I don't think anyone has ever left and returned before."
Gil nodded, almost answered Yes, someone has, but stopped himself. He glanced at her. She stared up at the display. Perhaps she had not seen his nod.
"Why would they do that?" Gil asked. "Your workЧ"
"Чcan be handled by someone else. My notes are all in the system. I justЧ" She squeezed his hand. "You could come with me."
"Excuse me?"