"Walter Jon Williams - City on Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

City on Fire (Sequel to Metropolitan)
Walter Jon Williams

ONE

The car shoots through the InterMet tunnel, flying beneath the world-city as
if propelled by the breath of a god. Drowsing on the car as it flies beneath
the world, Aiah dreams of the Burning Man.
He stands tall above the neighboring buildings, a figure of fire. A whirlwind
surrounds him, a spiral blur of tortured air, flying debris, swirling ash.
Holocausts leap into being at his approach; buildings explode into flame
merely at his passage. A torrent of fire flies from his fingertips, turning
to cinders everything it touches.
Unwilling, unable to help herself, knowing somehow it is a duty, Aiah
approaches the Burning Man. A scream comes from the hollow throat, a cry
mixed of terror and rage, and Aiah realizes that the giant figure is a woman.
As she comes a little closer, Aiah looks full into the face of the raging
figure and sees that the Burning Woman is herself.
She wakes with a start and finds herself in motion, in the pneuma car that
hisses along beneath the world. Sweat plasters her collar to her neck. She
swabs her throat with a handkerchief and again closes her eyes. Fire pulses
on the insides of her eyelids.
The arrow-straight tunnel of the pneuma is surrounded by the eternal weight
of the city . . . brick and stone, steel and iron and alloy, concrete and
glass, rising from bedrock and stretching toward the Shield far above. The
mass of it all is beyond comprehension. So is the power it creates.
All that is human is a generatorтАФevery building, every foundation, every
conduit or sewer or elevated trackline. All the world-city, every frame and
stone of it, produces and stores plasm, the foundation of geomantic power.
Power which, for a moment or two of brilliant comprehension, Aiah had held in
her mind. She had possessed its possibilities, its glories. Felt it change
her. Felt herself change the world. Felt its fires scorch her nerves.
Those certainties are gone now, replaced by confusion, hesitation, danger. If
she can get the power back, she thinks, even for a moment, all will become
clear.
If.
If.
If she can somehow get the power back.
MARTIAL LAW STILL IN FORCESURVIVING KEREMATHS DENOUNCE COUP FROM EXILEBy the
time she gets to Caraqui, Aiah has almost talked herself out of it. Foolish,
she's decided, to leave her place in Jaspeer, foolish to run, foolish to think
that the new government in Caraqui would give her a place. No Barkazils hereтАФ
she will be even more a foreigner here than in Jaspeer. And Constantine will
not give her anythingтАФhe did not love herтАФhe had only used her for what she
could give him, the keys to power, and could not possibly have any further
interest in her.
But the police had been after her, the Plasm Authority creepers, and sooner or
later they would have found something that would put her in prison. It was
time to leave Jaspeer. In her mind she had already leaped a hundred
bordersтАФcrossing them physically was almost an afterthought.