"Alastair Reynolds - Signal to Noise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

hours after Andrea’s death, he would have given anything to be able to see
her again. But now that the possibility had arisen, he found himself prone to
doubts. Given time, he knew he’d get over Andrea’s death. That wasn’t
being cold, it was just being realistic. He knew more than a few people
who’d lost their partners, and while they might have gone through some
dark times afterward, almost all of them now seemed settled and relatively
content. It didn’t mean they’d stopped feeling anything for the loved one
who had died, but it did mean they’d found some way to move on. There
was no reason to assume he wouldn’t make the same emotional recovery.

The question was, would visiting Andrea hasten or hamper that
process? Perhaps they should just have talked over the videolink, or even
the phone. But then he’d never been very good on either.

He knew it had to be face to face, all or nothing.
 “Is there a problem?” he asked Joe, innocently enough.

“Nope, everything’s fine. I was just waiting to hear that the other
version of you is ready.”

“He is?”

“Good to go. Someone from the medical center just put him under.
We can make the switch any time you’re ready.”

“Where is he?”

“Here,” Joe said. “I mean, in the counterpart to this room. He’s lying
on the same couch. It’s easier that way; there’s less of a jolt when you
switch over.”

“He’s unconscious already?”

“Full coma. Just like any nervelinked mule.”

Except, Mick thought, unlike the mules, his counterpart hadn’t signed
up to go into a chemically induced coma while his body was taken over by a
distant tourist. That was what Mick disapproved of more than anything. The
mules did it for money, and the mules were always the poorest people in
any given tourist hotspot, whether it was some affluent European city or
some nauseatingly “authentic” Third World shithole. No one ever aspired to
become a mule. It was what you did when all other options had dried up. In
some cases it hadn’t just supplanted prostitution, it had become an entirely
new form of prostitution in its own right.

But enough of that. They were all consenting adults here. No
one—least of all the other version of himself—was being exploited. The
other Mick was just being kind. No, kinder, Mick supposed, than he would
have been had the tables been reversed, but he couldn’t help feeling a
perverse sense of gratitude. And as for Andrea… well, she’d always been