"James Patrick Kelly - Dividing the Sustain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

Might that be why you are taking such drastic steps?”

“Have taken.” Been stepped away from Henk suddenly, and when the old man
lost his balance, Been danced him to a bulkhead and parked him against it. “You
want to see drastic steps?” he called out to the room. Dizzy watched, astonished, as
he continued to dance away from Henk. “Dra-astic steps, Jan-tastic steps,” he
crooned and caught a smirking Kinsella Frecktone up in his arms; he fit there like the
key to Been’s lock. Been wondered if Emsley might not have been wrong and he
had become fully gay overnight. “Come with me, darling, and together we’ll take
enthusi-ass-stic steps to the stars.” Been swung him into a cross-body lead and
Kinsella actually fol-lowed along for a few beats.

Then a lot of people were laughing and Been was laughing too and someone
gave him something dangerous to drink and he took a sip that looked bigger than it
was and when no one was looking, he spilled the rest into a trash container just
before he fell in with the Zinks.

“So when are you going to post a hard estimate for planetfall?” Been could
never tell Matty from Vron Zink, especially when their datacords were melded
together. The brothers were wide, dark, grim men with breath bad enough to make
engineers flinch. They never got jokes, no matter how obvious the telling. Their niece
Ment was younger and blonder. She had come aboard the Nine Ball to learn the
family trade.

“The sustain has been very folded tight,” said the brothers, speaking in unison
as they always did when they were sharing mind.

Young Ment Zink wandered over, as if sensing that her uncles were talking
business. The segmented datacord began to uncoil from around her neck. “Want me
to meld too?” she said to her uncles.

“Not necessary,” they said. “We have enough processing capacity for this
conversation.”
 Ment wound her datacord back behind her hair in disappointment. “Happy
birthday, Mr. Been Watanabe,” she said. “This is quite a coup. What do you know
about the captain that we don’t?”

“Never met the man.”

“He’s asking that we’ll make planetfall when,” said the uncles.

“I’d say we have at least two scant folds to slip through,” said Ment.

“Tomorrow,” said the uncles. “Or the after day.”

“Tomorrow?” said Been. “You mean ship subjective tomorrow?”

“No, standard tomorrow,” said Ment. “In the broad dimensions. They must
be thinking in real time.”