"Ian R. MacLeod - Home Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

so wrapped up in piloting the canhopper that Figgis and I can talk about her as
though she isn't here. Over her head on the consale is the date and time. March
14, 1912. And the day is yet young; Epsilon's computers have thoughtfully
avoided any kind of Jump lag. It's still only 10:30 in the morning.

Trackless, unseen, undetected, we sail five meters above the ice desert on an
electro-magnetic tide. I was expecting a storm, but everything looks clear and
sharp as a wedding cake, the sun gold and midway down the sky now, well into the
polar autumn. As always, I looked for changes when we first crawled out onto the
shattered ice of this new era, but there was nothing. If it were safe for us to
Jump as far 1950, it might be possible to pick out that hint grayish haze that
the jet pilots had started to report in the sky, but the real differences in
this polar environment are being sniffed out by Epsilon's many sensors. More
methane, more nitrogen, more carbon dioxide. More of most things apart from
oxygen. Even if the dictates of relative safety hadn't determined our choice,
the very sterility of the Antarctic would still have made it an ideal place for
monitoring the planet. But that's down to the data in the spectrometers that our
college will eventually download and sell to the highest bidder. All our poor
human senses can report is whiteness.

Janey clicks her lips open. "This is it, folks," she says.

I lean forward to see out of the windscreen. She's right; there are black specks
on the horizon. The canhopper sails quickly toward them.

Flags. Uptilted skis.

"For God's sake don't knock anything over...." Figgis murmurs.

But Janey's in control. The engines sigh to a halt. The canhopper settles its
smooth underside a safe distance away across the ice.

We bang elbows as we seal up the out-quits and the specially wide and flat-soled
shoes. Figgis says he thinks Woolley should go first. Janey nods from underneath
her hoot and mask. I feel a flood of gratitude, but as I unseal the hatch, I
wonder if they're doing it this way just so that Woolley'll get the blame if
anything goes wrong. Not that any of us really need to worry about that.

And out. And down the steps. This really does feel like a historic moment. Even
if Scott is a month gone from the Pole and Amundsen by longer, we're lonely
travelers here, too. Amid these fragile signs of human presence, it feels as if
we've arrived somewhere at last. The wind pours over me. It flutters the
Norwegian and British flags. The little tent Amundsen left behind is half-buried
in drift ice. He's already safely back at Framheim and preparing to report his
triumph to the world, but Scott's team are still out there, with Petty Officer
Evans already dead ant Captain Oates starting to limp badly....
Black shapes of tent and ski poles, the sun low and distant across the sparkling
ice. The whole scene belongs in some Edwardian painting, but it makes me feel
incredibly nostalgic for past times of my own, for the stories my mother used to
tell me on late afternoons after school by the lake in the park. Though she had