"Walter Jon Williams - Send Them Flowers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

SEND THEM FLOWERS
WALTER JON WILLIAMS


W
alter Jon Williams was born in Minnesota and now lives in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. His short fiction has appeared frequently in AsimovтАЩs Science Fiction, as
well as in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Wheel of Fortune, Global
Dispatches, Alternate Outlaws, and in other markets, and has been gathered in the
collections Facets and Frankensteins and Other Foreign Devils. His novels
include Ambassador of Progress, Knight Moves, Hardwired, The Crown Jewels,
Voice of the Whirlwind, House of Shards, Days of Atonement, Aristoi,
Metropolitan, City on Fire, a huge disaster thriller, The Rift, and a Star Trek novel,
DestinyтАЩs Way. His most recent books are the first two novels in his acclaimed
Modern Space Opera epic, тАЬDread EmpireтАЩs Fall,тАЭ Dread EmpireтАЩs Fall: The
Praxis and Dread EmpireтАЩs Fall: The Sundering. Coming up are two new novels,
Orthodox War and Conventions of War. He won a long-overdue Nebula Award in
2001 for his story тАЬDaddyтАЩs World,тАЭ and took another Nebula in 2005 with his story
тАЬThe Green Leop-ard Plague.тАЭ

Williams has made his name in New Space Opera circles with novels such as
Aristoi and the тАЬDread EmpireтАЩs FallтАЭ books, but those are not the only strings he
has to his bow. In the droll and exciting adventure that follows, he demonstrates that
even if you have multiple universes to flee through, the past has an uncomfortable
way of catching up with you...

****

We skipped through the borderlands of Probability, edging farther and farther away
from the safe universes that had become so much less safe for us, and into the fringe
areas where stars were cloudy smears of phosphores-cent gas and the Periodic
Table wasnтАЩt a guide, but a series of ever-more-hopeful suggestions.

Our ship was fueled for another seven years, but our flight ended at Socorro
for the most prosaic reason possible: we had run out of food. Exchange rates and
docking fees ate most of what little money we had, and that left us on Socorro with
enough cash for two weeksтАЩ food or one good party.

Guess which we chose?

For five months, weтАЩd been running from Shawn, or at any rate the cloaked,
dagger-bearing assassins we imagined him sending after us. IтАЩd had nothing but
TonioтАЩs company and freeze-dried food to eat, and the only wine weтАЩd drunk had
been stuff that Tonio brewed in plastic bags out of kitchen waste. We hadnтАЩt
realized how foul the air on the Olympe had grown until we stepped out of the
docking tube and smelled the pure recycled air of Socorro Topside, the station
floating in geosynchronous orbit at the end of its tether.

The delights of Topside glittered ahead of us, all lights and music, the sizzle of
grilled meats and the clink of glasses. How could we resist?