"James Van Pelt - Of Late I Dreamt of Venus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pelt James Van)

working the problem, but it has requested a bigger budget.”
Elizabeth snorted derisively. “Give them Halley’s comet. It doesn’t
have as much water as it used to anyway.”
“Noted.” Henry sent the order. “Your investments and companies
are sound.”
“How is the United Nation’s terraforming project on Mars going?”
“Badly. They’ve lost momentum.”
“Too big of a project to run by democracies and committees. Too
long.” She sighed. “If nothing needs my attention, then I suppose it’s
time for bed.”



3
James Van Pelt


Henry shut his monitors off, powered down the equipment. A
metal curtain slid across the view window, separating them from Venus’
tortured atmosphere. “Two hundred years hardly seems like going to
bed. Everyone I know will be dead when we awake.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “They’re all twenty-seven years older than
when you talked with them last. As far as they’re concerned, you’re the
dead one.”
A door opened in the center of the floor. Elizabeth looked down
the ladder that connected the alcove with the rest of the habitat. The
ladder rotated beneath her. She timed her step to land on the top rung,
then moved down so she held the ladder, leaving her head and shoulders
at floor level. The room turned slowly around her. “No second
thoughts, Henry. You knew the cost going in.”
He nodded at her. She saw in his eyes the yearning. The dream of a
terraformed Venus hadn’t brought him onto the project, made him say
goodbye to everyone he’d ever known, committed him to a project on a
time scale never attempted.
No, he came for her.
The rotation turned her so she didn’t have to see his gaze. She
continued down the ladder. Mostly she thought about the project and
the long line of asteroids on their way to add their inertia to Venus’ spin,
but below those thoughts ran a thread about Henry. She thought, as
long as he remains a reliable assistant, what does it matter why he signed
up? Henry Harrison isn’t the first man who worked for me because he
wanted me.

Two hundred years of suspended life, trembling on death’s edge,
metabolism so slow that only the most sensitive instruments detected it.
Busy nanomechs coursing through the veins, correcting flaws, patching
break downs, keeping the protein machine whole and ready to function.
Automatic devices moving the still limbs through a range of motion