"Greg Egan - Dark Integers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

DARK INTEGERS
by Greg Egan

Our new story from Greg Egan is a stand-alone tale that follows on
the events of “Luminous” (September 1995). It’s also the first story
we’ve seen from Greg since “Oracle” appeared in our July 2000
issue. The author tells us, though, that “after spending a few years
away from writing, trying to assist some of the asylum seekers that
Australia imprisons in remote detention centers, I recently
completed my seventh SF novel, Incandescence, which is due to be
published by Gollancz in the UK in May 2008.” We hope that this
return to writing means we’ll soon be seeing more of his brilliant
fiction.

****

“Good morning, Bruno. How is the weather there in Sparseland?”

The screen icon for my interlocutor was a three-holed torus tiled with
triangles, endlessly turning itself inside out. The polished tones of the male
synthetic voice I heard conveyed no specific origin, but gave a sense
nonetheless that the speaker’s first language was something other than
English.

I glanced out the window of my home office, taking in a patch of blue
sky and the verdant gardens of a shady West Ryde cul-de-sac. Sam used
“good morning” regardless of the hour, but it really was just after ten A.M.,
and the tranquil Sydney suburb was awash in sunshine and birdsong.

“Perfect,” I replied. “I wish I wasn’t chained to this desk.”

There was a long pause, and I wondered if the translator had
mangled the idiom, creating the impression that I had been shackled by
ruthless assailants, who had nonetheless left me with easy access to my
instant messaging program. Then Sam said, “I’m glad you didn’t go for a
run today. I’ve already tried Alison and Yuen, and they were both
unavailable. If I hadn’t been able to get through to you, it might have been
difficult to keep some of my colleagues in check.”

I felt a surge of anxiety, mixed with resentment. I refused to wear an
iWatch, to make myself reachable twenty-four hours a day. I was a
mathematician, not an obstetrician. Perhaps I was an amateur diplomat as
well, but even if Alison, Yuen, and I didn’t quite cover the time zones, it
would never be more than a few hours before Sam could get hold of at
least one of us.

“I didn’t realize you were surrounded by hotheads,” I replied. “What’s
the great emergency?” I hoped the translator would do justice to the
sharpness in my voice. Sam’s colleagues were the ones with all the
firepower, all the resources; they should not have been jumping at