"Gwyneth Jones - The Fulcrum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Gwyneth)

The Fulcrum
GWYNETH JONES
From Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection (2006)

One of the most acclaimed British writers of her generation, Gwyneth Jones was a cowinner of
the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award for work exploring genre issues in science fiction, with her
1991 novel White Queen, and has also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, with her novel Bold As
Love, as well as receiving two World Fantasy Awards—for her story "The Grass Princess" and
her collection Seven Tales and a Fable. Her other books include the novels North Wind,
Flowerdust, Escape Plans, Divine Endurance, Phoenix Cafe, Castles Made of Sand, Stone Free,
Midnight Lamp, Kairos, Life, Water in the Air, The Influence of Ironwood, The Exhange, Dear
Hill, and The Hidden Ones, as well as more than sixteen Young Adult novels published under the
name Ann Halam. Her too-infrequent short fiction has appeared in Interzone, Asimov's Science
Fiction, Off Limits, and in other magazines and anthologies, and has been collected in Identifying
the Object: A Collection of Short Stories, as well as Seven Tales and a Fable. She is also the
author of the critical study Deconstructing the Starships: Science Fiction and Reality. Her stories
have appeared in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Annual Collections. She lives in
Brighton, England, with her husband, her son, and a Burmese cat.

Archimedes once said, "Give me the place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the
Earth." In the story that follows, such a lever is provided —and proves to be able to move more
worlds than one…

In the constellation of Orion, and illuminated by the brilliant star N380 Orionis, you will find the
reflection nebula NGC 1999, and the "homo sapiens" Bok Globule, famous in astronomical
history. This star nursery is the apparent location of the Buonarotti region, to which the 4-space
equations give the shape of a notional cross with two-pointed expanding wings, known to Deep
Spacers and other romantics as The Fulcrum. To some, this "X marks the spot" is the forbidden
gate to Eldorado; to others, it's the source of our consciousness and an oracle of our future, set
like Delphi at the navel of space-time…

The aliens came back to their cabin to find that they'd been turned over again. Last time, they'd lost their
drugs. This time it was the bikes. They sat in the wreckage of scattered belongings, letting the spume of
violent and futile emotion shed from them, and feeling scared. Losing the fish-oil stash had been serious,
but extreme tourists have to accept that they are rich and they will get ripped off. This was different. No
one else on the station had any possible use for the exercise bikes. Their fellow prospectors were almost
exclusively Deep Space veterans. A few hours a day of simulated mountain racing wouldn't touch their
problem with the gravity well.

In the end, the company of their violated possessions got them down, so they decided to go and see
Eddie the Supercargo. They knew he wouldn't do anything, but it's always better to report racial
harassment. They put their coats on and bounced gently along the drab corridors—two humanoid aliens,
about two meters tall, pale skinned and diffident, each with a crest of stiff red hair. Although they were a
heterosexual couple, to human eyes they were as identical as identical twins—but unlike human identical
twins, they didn't mind being mistaken for each other. They didn't meet anyone. The Kuiper Belt station
did not aspire to the parkland illusions or shopping opportunities of near-Earth orbital hotels. Unless they
were preparing for transit, most of the prospectors never left their cabins except to visit the saloon.
There were plans that the Panhandle would become the hub of a Deep Space International City, hence
all the empty space in the Pan. For the moment it was simply an asymmetric ceramic fiber dumbbell,
spinning in a minimal collision orbit-area of the asteroid reach—the Pan full of prospectors and their