"Kelly,_James_Patrick_-_Ninety_Percent_of_Everything" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

Copters hovered around Queen Jolly Freeze like gulls around a beached whale. I could see a commentator talking excitedly into his throat mike. I ran out to the rec room and turned on the pix. "...Floating pleasure-palace drifts toward the largest of the alien piles..." A telephoto close-up showed Wetherall at the controls; it made him look goofier than he really was. "...identity of the woman is still unknown. We have unconfirmed reports that it's pix flame Daphne Overdone, spirited away from the set of the interactive spectacular _Madonna_ by special black operatives of Allweather Security, Wetherall's Jolly Freeze subsidiary...."
"Whoa, Nguyen!" said Wetherall. "This is close enough."
The base skidded slowly to a halt. I ran back to Wetherall. We floated alongside pile B. The air was thick with the smell of strawberries and chocolate. Outside the window of the observation deck, twenty meters away, were the jewels that crowned the shitpile.
I hadn't been this close to a cluster since we had decapitated Pile A four years ago. Since there's no way to quantify beauty, scientists are supposed to ignore it. But the view of the jewels took my breath away.
There were three main groups. Each consisted of hexagonal rhombohedrons, the largest over three meters in length and almost half a meter in diameter. But the surface of each of the larger jewels was fixed with a myriad of smaller rhombohedrons, and each of those with still smaller ones, in a kind of fractal dance. The colors ranged from the liquid red of garnet, through a fiery gold, to azure, tourmaline and indigo. The morning sunlight reflecting off and refracting through them threw a thousand brilliant highlights.
"This is why I built this house," Wetherall said quietly. "I'm sorry I had to push you around to do it."
"They're beautiful," I said.
Wetherall was silent for a long time. I sat beside him and the two of us watched the jewels bloom as the sun rose. I wondered whether they had any intelligible purpose at all, or were just some chance production of a heap of alien shit. It would be a good joke on all of us -- but no more than the beauty of a spiral galaxy, or of the pattern of seeds in a sunflower. Was all this sound and fury, my career in the university, Thorp's career in the media, Nguyen's architectural commission and Wetherall's billions put in service of it, justified by a calm ten minutes at the apex of Pile B? In the end, Wetherall was a pretty sad character. And if he was sad, then what was I, with my academic infighting, the "shitdogs studies community" and coffee for Saintjohn Matthewson?
The light seemed to dance in the corner of my eye and I started to feel that odd feeling again, like I was standing next to myself. As I looked at Liz Cobble, I saw a woman who was very plain indeed -- nobody special. It made me ashamed to realize that I had spent my life tarnishing the brilliance I'd been born with. I did not shine. Who would ever be dazzled by me?
* * * *
Of course, I knew exactly when it had all begun. At the nurse's station in the ICU of St. Anne's hospital. The smiley nurse with the hair thick as rubber bands wanted to give me a lollipop. I didn't want a lollipop. I was eight years old and my mother was dying and I was going to have to live the rest of my life with my two aunts, who dressed strange and smelled funny and never had anything to eat in their house.
"Here, take it honey," the nurse said. It was purple. Of course she didn't know that I hated purple lollipops. "We only give them to special little girls."
"I don't want to be special," little Lizzy Cobble had said. "I want to go home."
She was such a stubborn little girl.
* * * *
"Liz, does it seem to you that they're glowing?"
Wetherall's words roused me from my orgy of self-reproach. At first I thought it was just the angle of the sun, then I realized that Wetherall was right. The jewels were beginning to glow.
"Has anyone spotted this phenomenon before?" Wetherall asked.
"It's not in the literature," I said. "We need to get closer. This could be a breakthrough."
"You think it's some sort of radioactivity?"
"I doubt it. There's nothing in their chemical composition that..."
Nguyen interrupted us.
"Wetherall, we've got problems."
"What?" Wetherall asked.
"Actually at least a hundred problems. Thorp has come to visit -- with some friends."
I ran out to the balcony to see. One of the buses had gotten through and had pulled up beside the base. A crowd was boiling out. People threw themselves on the ground in front of the treads of the base. Thorp, wearing a severe black suit and a wide straw hat, directed them with a bullhorn. When the base was surrounded on three sides he turned the horn up toward Queen Jolly Freeze.
"WETHERALL!" his amplified voice boomed. "MAKE THIS FOOL PULL YOUR HOUSE BACK FROM THE JEWELS. YOU DON'T REALIZE THE DANGER YOU'RE PUTTING US ALL IN -- THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE! YOU WERE CRAZY TO TRY TO REPLACE ME WITH THAT WOMAN -- SHE DOESN'T KNOW A THING ABOUT THESE CREATURES. PULL BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!"
Nguyen had climbed down from the cab of the base to argue with Thorp. He gesticulated wildly, pointing off across the flats where the fifth shitdog had joined its four fellows. They crouched all in a line; I had never seen anything like it. Their pattern seemed deeply meaningful.
The copters dropped down low. Their backwash jostled the Queen Jolly Freeze. I could see telephotos on Thorp. This was his moment in the sun; I hoped the old loon was sweating.
Wetherall switched on the house's PA system and leaned into the microphone. "Dr. Thorp, you are trespassing on private property. Gather your people together and leave before we call in the authorities."
"YOU'RE TOYING WITH DISASTER. ALREADY, BECAUSE OF YOUR ACTIVITIES, SHITDOGS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD ARE GATHERING HERE. NOW YOU'RE GOING TO SET OFF THE BEACON, AND BEFORE YOU KNOW IT THE BIG DOGS WILL BE HERE!"
I leaned over and grabbed the microphone. I decided not to mention anything about the jewels beginning to glow. "Thorp, you microcephalic poser! What are you babbling about? If you think -- "
"Liz," said Wetherall. He pointed.
Thorp, and Nguyen and the crowd of protesters all turned their heads in the same direction, as if they were connected to servos. The effect was impressive. Once they saw the five shitdogs that were marching in a line toward the base, however, the illusion of unity vanished.
Nguyen dashed for the cab. A dozen protesters did the same, crowding in with him as Nguyen tried to get the thing moving again. Those who didn't fit hung off the sides. But most of the others were still lying on the ground, and there was no room to maneuver. Thorp stood calmly in place while the panic-stricken swirled around him. He raised the bullhorn. "DON'T WORRY." His voice crackled. "THEY MEAN US NO HARM. THIS IS PART OF THE PLAN."
"What is he doing?" I asked Wetherall. "I'm going down there."
"With those lunatics? No. Besides we're too high."
"Then reel in the tether. I need to get down, Wetherall. Right now!"
"No, Liz."
I stared at him. Who did he think he was, telling me what to do? I ran down to the bottom floor, overrode the locks and popped the hatch. Thanks to the breeze, the house was floating to the south of the base, and forty meters below lay the edge where the castings pile met the salt flats. Off to the north thirty meters, the protesters boiled around the base truck -- most of them. Here and there in the crowd was one who stood stock still, like Thorp, as if dazed.
I threw the emergency ladder over the edge and it unrolled to within a couple of meters of the ground. Close enough -- I swung my legs over the edge, and, clutching the ladder white-knuckled, began to climb down.
"Liz, no!" I heard Wetherall shout from above me.
Derring-do is harder in real life than in the gropies. Looking down made me want to throw up, so I didn't. I tried to fix on the horizon. The breeze caught the ladder and I began to describe a long, lazy ellipse approximately ten stories off the ground. Meanwhile, the shifting of my weight as I moved from rung to rung made the ladder twist. I began to wonder if maybe I was as crazy as Thorp. At least he had two feet on the ground. A copter came over to watch me and my clothes flapped like angry birds. The base moved a few meters and then jerked to a stop.
I almost lost my grip. "Nice driving, Nguyen." I muttered, and looked down. Only it wasn't Nguyen driving at all. He had been thrown from the cab by protestors and was only now scrambling back on.
Just in front of the base truck, a circle of the salt flat was boiling and churning. The center of the patch fell away, and a pair of blue legs poked out. It was a shitdog, hatching from the desert like a baby dinosaur. But that was impossible; all five shitdogs were marching in formation on the stranded base.
I froze on the ladder. I was suddenly dizzy, and it wasn't only because I was doing a high wire act without a net.
Another pair of claws burst through the salt crust, then another. All around the piles shitdogs erupted from the desert.
Someone had forgotten to give them a copy of the schedule. Convergence was happening early. Within minutes we would be dealing not just with five shitdogs, but with twenty-five.
* * * *
Most of the protestors broke ranks now, scattering in every direction, throwing themselves onto the base, although quite a few still remained by Thorp's side. The base was backing away, or attempting to, its treads spinning against the resistance of the massive lifthouse. The ladder twisted and jerked. I wrapped my legs around the rung and twisted my arms in the rope, clinging for my life like Dejah Thoris, six stories above an approaching horde of alien creatures that smelled like lilacs. But the thing that surprised me the most was that I wanted to climb down more than ever. It was as if the shitdogs were calling me.