"Walter Jon Williams - Surfacing (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

WALTER JON WILLIAMS


Surfacing


Walter Jon Williams was born in Minnesota and now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Regarded as one of the hottest new talents in science fiction, Williams has sold stories to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Omni, Far Frontiers, Wild Cards, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His novels include Ambassador of Progress, Knight Moves, Hardwired, The Crown Jewels, and Voice of the Whirlwind. His most recent novels are House of Shards and Angel Station (out soon). His story "Side Effects" was in our Third Annual Collection; his story "Video Star" was in our Fourth Annual Collection; and "Dinosaurs" was in our Fifth Annual Collection.


Here he takes us sailing on mysterious alien seas on distant alien worlds, in search of elusive and dangerous prey.


Giv


SURFACING


Walter Jon Williams


There was an alien on the surface of the planet. A Kyklops had teleported into Overlook Station, and then flown down on the shuttle. Since, unlike humans, it could teleport without apparatus, presumably it took the shuttle for the ride. The Kyklops wore a human body, controlled through an n-dimensional interface, and took its pleasures in the human fashion.


The Kyklops expressed an interest in Anthony's work, but Anthony avoided it: he stayed at sea and listened to aliens of another kind.


Anthony wasn't interested in meeting aliens who knew more than he did.


The boat drifted in a cold current and listened to the cries of the sea. A tall grey swell was rolling in from the southwest, crossing with a wind-driven easterly chop. The boat tossed, caught in the confusion of wave patterns.


It was a sloppy ocean, somehow unsatisfactory. Marking a sloppy day.


Anthony felt a thing twist in his mind. Something that, in its own time, would lead to anger.


The boat had been out here, both in the warm current and then in the cold, for three days. Each more unsatisfactory than the last.


The growing swell was being driven toward land by a storm that was breaking up fifty miles out to sea: the remnants of the storm itself would arrive by midnight and make things even more unpleasant. Spray feathered across the tops of the waves. The day was growing cold.


Spindrift pattered across Anthony's shoulders. He ignored it, concentrated instead on the long, grating harmonic moan picked up by the microphones his boat dangled into the chill current. The moan ended on a series of clicks and trailed off. Anthony tapped his computer deck. A resolution appeared on the screen. Anthony shaded his eyes from the pale sun and looked at it.


Anthony gazed stonily at the translation tree. "I am rising toward and thinking hungrily about the slippery-tasting coordinates" actually made the most objective sense, but the righthand branch of the tree was the most