"George R. R. Martin - Loaves and Fishes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

was firm and graceful; she swam through the spokes of the web and the corridors, halls, and parks of
Spiderhome as fluidly as a fish through water, her long arms and thin, muscular legs pushing, touching,
propelling her along. She never wore shoes; her feet were almost as clever as her hands.
Even out in naked space, where veteran spinnerets wore cumbersome suits and moved awkwardly along
tether lines, Tolly Mune chose mobility and form-fitting skinthins. Skinthins gave only minimal protection
against the hard radiation of S’ulstar, but Tolly took a perverse pride in the deep blue-black cast of her
skin, and swallowed anti-carcinoma pills by the handful each morning rather than opt for slow, clumsy
safety. Out in the bright hard black between the web strands, she was the master. She wore airjets at
wrist and ankle, and no one was more expert in their use. She zipped freely from fly to fly, checking here,
visiting there, attending all the meetings, supervising the work, welcoming important flies, hiring, firing,
solving any problem that might arise.
Up in her web, Portmaster Tolly Mune, Ma Spider, the Steel Widow, was everything she had ever
wanted to be, equal to every task, and more than satisfied with the cards she’d drawn.
Then came a night-cycle when she was buzzed from a sound sleep by her Deputy Portmaster. “It better
be goddamned important,” she said when she stared at him over her vidscreen.
“You better access Control,” he said.
“Why?”
“Fly coming in,” he said. “Big fly.”
Tolly Mune scowled. “You wouldn’t dare wake me up for nothing. Let’s have it.”
“A real big fly,” he stressed. “You have to see this. It’s the biggest damn fly I’ve ever laid eyes on. Ma,
no fooling, this thing is thirty kays long.”
“Puling hell,” she said, in the last uncomplicated moment of her life, before she made the acquaintance of
Haviland Tuf.


She swallowed a handful of bright blue anti-carcinogens, washed them down with a healthy squeeze from
a bulb of beer, and studied the holo apparition that stood before her. “Large ship you’ve got there,” she
said casually. “What the hell is it?”
“The Ark is a biowar seedship of the Ecological Engineering Corps,” replied Haviland Tuf.
“The EEC?” she said. “You don’t say.”
“Must I repeat myself, Portmaster Mune?”
“This is the Ecological Engineering Corps of the old Federal Empire, now?” she asked. “Based on
Prometheus? Specialists in cloning, biowar—the ones who custom-tailored all kinds of ecological
catastrophe?” She watched Tuf’s face as she spoke. He dominated the center of her small, cramped,
disorderly, and too-seldom-visited office in Spiderhome, his holographic projection standing among the
drifting, weightless clutter like some huge white ghost. From time to time a balled up sheet of paper
floated through him.
Tuf was big. Tolly Mune had met flies who liked to magnify themselves in holo, so they came across as
bigger than they were. Maybe that was what this Haviland Tuf was doing. Somehow she thought not,
though; he didn’t seem the sort. Which meant he really did stand some two-and-a-half meters tall, a good
half-meter above the tallest spinneret she’d ever met. And that one had been as much a freak as Tolly
herself; S’uthlamese were a small people—a matter of nutrition and genetics.
Tuf’s face gave absolutely nothing away. He interlocked his long fingers calmly on top of the swollen
bulge of his stomach. “The very same,” he replied. “Your historical erudition is to be commended.”
“Why, thank you,” she said amiably. “Correct me if I’m wrong, though, but being historically erudite and
all, I seem to recall that the Federal Empire collapsed, oh, a thousand years ago. And the EEC vanished
too—disbanded, recalled to Prometheus or Old Earth, destroyed in combat, gone from human space,
whatever. Of course, the Prometheans still have a lot of the old biotech, it’s said. We don’t get many
Prometheans way out here, so I couldn’t say for sure. But they’re a bit jealous about sharing any of their
knowledge, I’ve heard. So, let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’ve got a thousand-year-old EEC