"Greg Egan - Crystal Nights" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

CRYSTAL NIGHTS
Greg Egan

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Illustrated by Warwick Fraser-Coombe

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Greg Egan last appeared in these pages with ‘Singleton’ (IZ176). His novel
Incandescence will be published by Gollancz in the UK and by Night Shade
Books in the USA in May. A story collection, Dark Integers and Other
Stories, is out in March from Subterranean Books. For more information on
these books and much more please visit Greg’s website at gregegan.net.

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1

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“More caviar?” Daniel Cliff gestured at the serving dish and the cover irised
from opaque to trans-parent. “It’s fresh, I promise you. My chef had it flown
in from Iran this morning.”

“No thank you.” Julie Dehghani touched a napkin to her lips then laid it
on her plate with a gesture of finality. The dining room overlooked the
Golden Gate bridge, and most people Daniel invited here were content to
spend an hour or two simply enjoying the view, but he could see that she
was growing impatient with his small talk.

Daniel said, “I’d like to show you something.” He led her into the
adjoining conference room. On the table was a wireless keyboard; the wall
screen showed a Linux command line interface. “Take a seat,” he
suggested.

Julie complied. “If this is some kind of audition, you might have
warned me,” she said.

“Not at all,” Daniel replied. “I’m not going to ask you to jump through
any hoops. I’d just like you to tell me what you think of this machine’s
performance.”

She frowned slightly, but she was willing to play along. She ran some
standard benchmarks. Daniel saw her squinting at the screen, one hand
almost reaching up to where a desktop display would be, so she could