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

twenty-second century settled down like drizzle.
Humanity struggled through the Fall, the Green Death, and the Crash, and came out of the dark
century with a deep disapproval of the capitalist system (which brought the Fall), for the Greens
(who brought the Death), and for the Outwarders (who brought the Crash, and whose viral
programs still radiated, making electronic computation and communication hazardous at best).
The capitalist system was abolished, the Greens became extinct, and the Outwarders The
Outwarders had still to be dealt with.
I checked that I was alone on the roof. The chill, fluted funnels of the Carson process sighed in
their endless breath, their beaded condensation quivering into driblets. I moved around in their
shadow, and sighted on, not low-looming Jupiter, but the Moon. I squatted, spreading the dress
carelessly, and reached up and scratched the monkey’s head and whispered in its ear.
The monkey began to melt into the jacket’s shoulder, and then dress and jacket together flowed
like mercury, and reshaped themselves into a ten-foot-wide dish aerial within which I crouched, my
head covered by a fine net that spun itself up from where the collar had been. A needle-thin rod
grew swiftly to the aerial’s focus. Threads of wire spooled out across the deck, seeking power
sources, II finding one in seconds. The transformed smart-suit hummed around me.
“It’s still no,” I said. “Going for the second option.”
“Tight-beam message sent,” said the suit. “Acknowledged by Lagrange relay.”
And that was that. The recipients of the message would know what I meant by “the second
option”. Nobody else would. My mission was confined to more than radio silence; the whole
reason I’d come here myself was that we couldn’t even trust word-of-mouth. The narrow-beamed
radio message would be picked up and passed on by laser, which had the advantage that the Jovians
could neither interfere with nor overhear it. It would be bounced to our ship, the Terrible Beauty,
which was at this moment on the other side of the Earth, and sent on to the Division’s base on
Callisto. There would be a bare acknowledgement from Callisto, in a matter of hours. I was not
going to wait around for it, not like this. I stood up and told the suit to resume its previous shape.
When the dress was restored I gave it an unnecessary but celebratory twirl, and spun straight into
somebody’s arms. As I stumbled back a pace I saw that I’d bumped into Stephan Vrij, the
photographer.
We stood looking at each other for a moment.
“The things you see when you don’t have your camera,” I said.
“I didn’t follow you,” he said awkwardly. “I was just looking around. Last part of my job for
the evening. It’s amazing the crazy things people do up here, after a party.”
“Can you forget this?” I asked.
“OK,” he said. He looked away.
“Then I’ll promise to forget you.” I reached out and caught his hand. “Come on. I’ve had a lot
of drinks, and you’ve had none, right?”
“Yes,” he said, looking a bit puzzled as I tugged at his hand and set off determinedly towards the
elevator shaft. I grinned down at him.
“What better way to start the night?”
“You have a point there,” he said.
 “Well, no,” I said, “I rather hope you ...”
Laughing, we went to his room.
When you are among another people, or another people is among you, and you lust after their
strange flesh, go you and take your pleasure in them, and have sons and daughters by them, and
your people shall live long upon the lands and your children shall fill the skies.
So it is written in the Books of Jordan, anyway. Genetics, chapter 3, verse 8.
I woke in a comfortable, if disorderly, bed. Stephan Vrij snored peacefully beside me. We were
both naked, and I was under a quilt. I drew the quilt over him and he rolled over in his sleep.
From the angle of the light through the window, it was midmorning on another fine day. The