"Wil McCarthy - Boundary Condition" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCarty Sarah)

So, never mind that in low-earth orbit the Sun rises and sets 16 times a day; on an NWS station your
morning is the Nebraska Cornhuskers' morning, and your evening occurs as the Sun slips down behind
the lone tower called "Prick of the Prairie" and settles into an ocean of Tango-zone corn and buckwheat.

Wave to Headquarters as you soar high above; the city is instantly recognizable even from orbit.
Surrounded by that grassy ocean, Omaha's southwestern edge has, in recent years, finally blurred into the
outer fringes of Lincoln. Its eastern frontier encompasses the city of Council Bluffs, Iowa. But sail a little
farther and you're in the open sea, where the cornstalks outnumber the human beings twenty million to
one. Where the nearest civilization is 225 kilometers away, and it's only Des Moines. So if the Gate to
God isn't exactly the most cosmopolitan city in the world, you should understand in all fairness that it
doesn't need to be.

Oh-MA-ha, the locals call it, when they're in a mood to chuckle. The Big Island.

It was with great secrecy — disguised as dull routine — that a particular spaceplane lifted off from this
site, this place in the middle of no place, and lit an Orbital Insertion Motor that flung it hard toward an
NWS station speeding 500 kilometers overhead.

"Relief vehicle away," said a bored-sounding flight controller. "Tell Dewey Park their replacements are en
route." It was a half-truth at best, but a half-lie at worst. The National Weather Service is nothing if not
pragmatic.

But this young man was in on more secrets than his managers supposed, and while he spoke there was a
dead body cooling under his desk — the first of many who would lose their lives in the coming spasm of
transformation and realignment. The why of this is difficult to explain even now, though the where and
when and how are little in doubt. But in some sense the motive for murder — even mass murder — is
always the same: to control the future by removing people from it.

1.
Shuttlerise

Catskin. Iceland Spar, medium. Hand and Bladder Glass. Magdeburg Hemispheres. Lodestone.
Tantalus Cup.

— "Apparatus and Material for Experiments in Physics", CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics,
Cleveland, Ohio, 1913.

"Onigiri," said Tomohiro Sato, holding up one of the sticky rice balls he and Chip had been whipping up
in the galley these past few weeks. They were the size of small peaches, and with a bit of salty fish paste
in the center, they were good. They also held together in zero-g, making them the only decent way to eat
rice up here without a godawful mess.

"Rice ball," answered Jiminy Gomez, wondering what the zinger was this time. Tomo — a famous
weatherman in his own country — was here on Dewey Park Station to learn the delicate art of the Free
Will Index forecast, and he seemed determined to teach something of comparable value in return: the art
of the bilingual pun.

"Nigiri means 'squeeze,'" Tomo explained, as they drifted through the gray-white pressurized tunnel
connecting the trailing sensor arm to the station core. "With your hand, right? To form the rice into a ball."
His accent wasn't perfect, but it was good; only the pacing really betrayed him.