"Planet Of The Amazon Women" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moles David)

Moles, David - Planet of the Amazon WomenPlanet of the Amazon Women
David Moles
From Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection
(2006)
David Moles has lived in six time zones on three continents, and hopes some day
to collect the whole set. His fiction and poetry have been published in
Polyphony, Say..., Rabid Transit, Flytrap, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet,
and Asimov's, as well as on Strange Horizons.



Planet of the Amazon Women. That's what Musa called it. He makes kinйs, he has a
keen sense of the ridiculous in art and history. When he found out I was on my
way to Hippolyta he said nothing at first, only looked at me, black eyes serious
in his dark face; looked at me, I think, until he was sure I was telling the
truth. He covered my hand with his. Then, as if we had both said everything that
needed to be said, he stood up abruptly.
"Come on, Sasha," he said. "Let's go dancing."
Musa. A chance meeting in the men's dormitory of an Erewhon orbital transit
hostel. If I had met him when I was twenty he would have been the great love of
my life.
That is probably how I will remember him, if things on Hippolyta go half-right.
If I grow old on the Planet of the Amazon Women, and die there.



There is something about the crew of the S.P.S. Tenacious, the picket ship that
the Erewhon Republic has stationed in Hippolyta's system to prevent any
excursion from the Planet of the Amazon Women, that is both comical and
touching. They take themselves very seriously, with their crisp white uniforms
and their military ranks and their short haircuts. (Most of them are human, and
most of the humans are men—boys, really.) They take their job very seriously,
too, with a certain pride that they are the only ones in this part of the
Polychronicon interested in the problem: the universe may be dangerous and
chaotic and very poorly organized, but the Republic, and the Navy, are up to the
task.
They're not, of course. The universe is so much more disorganized than these
comic-opera astronauts could even imagine. That's what makes it so touching.
"And this is the Operations Center," Lieutenant Addison tells me. "Where we
control the sensor platforms and the particle-beam satellites. We've never had
to use them, thank God."
Addison looks at me, and I look at the room full of complicated equipment and
focused young men and nod as if I knew what I was looking at. Already I am
practicing my imposture, preparing myself for Hippolyta. This is a dance, and I
am improvising it.
Satisfied, Addison turns to indicate the next point of interest, and I turn back
to watching Addison. He's skinny and cute and can't be more than twenty-five. He
doesn't know what to say to a civilian who's volunteered for a suicide mission,
but he's trying.