"Ken Macleod - Fall Revolution 3 - The Cassini Division" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

depending on how fast the outbreak’s spreading, there’s nobody else around for tens of kilometres.
You know, just about every one I’ve done, I’ve picked up a species that wasn’t in the bank. Genus,
sometimes. Not known to science, as they say. Ran out of girlfriends to name them after, had to
start on my actual relatives. And then you come out, and you sit around with the goggles and
watch the zap. I mean, I like to see the flash, it’s the next best thing to watching a nuke go off.”
The ecologist stopped and took another deep hit on the hookah. I waved away his offer of a
toke. He sighed.
“The times when there’s nobody around but you ... You just gotta love that wilderness
experience.”
I had reached halfway across to the centre of the room. I wanted to offer the stoned scientist a
shot of vodka, but the monkey had, in a moment of abstraction, devoured my last spare glass. The
man didn’t mind. He assured me he’d remember my name, and that some beetle or bug or
bacterium would, one day, be named in my honour. I realised that I couldn’t remember his name.
Or perhaps he hadn’t told me, or perhaps ... a certain amount of passive smoking was going on
around here. I thanked him, and moved on.
“And don’t do things like that,” I murmured. “It’s conspicuous.” A cold paw teased my ear, and
a faint, buzzing voice said: “We’re low on silicates.”
I scratched the little pseudo-beast in response, and hoped no one had noticed my lips move. I
felt a sudden pang of hunger and a need for a head-clearing dose of coffee, and stopped at the
nearest buffet table. A woman wearing a plain, stained white apron over a gorgeous green sari
ladled me a hot plate of limpets in tomato sauce. (All real, if it matters. I guess it must: my mouth
waters at the memory, even now.) I decided on a glass of white wine. There were empty chairs
around, so I sat. The woman sat, too, at the other side of the table, and chatted with me as I ate.
“I’ve just spoken to our special guests,” she said. She had an unusual accent. “Such interesting
people. An artificial woman, and a man from the stars! And back from the dead, in a sense.” She
looked at me sharply. “Perhaps you’ll have met them before, being from space yourself?”
I smiled at her. “How come everyone knows I’m from space?” “Your dress, neighbour,” she
said. “Gold is a space thing, isn’t it? It isn’t one of our colours.” “Of course,” I said. For a
moment I’d thought she’d guessed it was a spacesuit. After she’d spoken, after I’d had a minute to
observe how she moved, the subtle way her face cast its expressions, it was obvious that she was
well into her second century. There would be no fooling her. She looked right back at me, her
eyes shining like the pins in her piled-up black hair.
“Gold is such a useful metal,” she said. “You know, Lenin thought we’d use it for urinals ...”
I laughed. “Not his only mistake!”
Her reply was a degree or two cooler that her first remarks. “He didn’t make many, and those he
did were the opposite of ... what’s usually held against him. He thought too highly of people, as
individuals and in the mass. Anyway,” she went on, complacently, “some of us still think highly of
him.”
I’d placed her accent now. “In South Africa?” They were a notoriously conservative lot. Some
of them were virtually Communists.
“Why, yes, neighbour!” She smiled. “And you’re from ... now don’t tell me ... not near-Earth;
not Lagrange ... and you’re no Loony or Martian, that’s for sure.” She frowned, watching as I lifted
my glass, looking past me at, perhaps, her memory of how I’d walked up to the table. Weighing
and measuring my reflexes. “Yes!” She clapped her hands. “You’re a Callistan girl, aren’t you?
And that means.. .”
Her eyes widened a fraction, her brows rose.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “The Cassini Division. And yes, I’ve seen your guests before.” I winked,
ever so slightly, and made a tiny downward movement with my fingers as I reached across the table
for a piece of bread. Not one in a hundred would have as much as noticed the gesture. She
understood it, and smiled, and talked about other things.