"Alastair Reynolds - Turquoise Days" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

Turquoise Days

‘Set sail in those Turquoise Days’
Echo and the Bunnymen



ONE
Naqi Okpik waited until her sister was safely asleep before she stepped onto the railed balcony that
circled the gondola.
It was the most perfectly warm and still summer night in months. Even the breeze caused by the
airship's motion was warmer than usual, as soft against her cheek as the breath of an attentive lover.
Above, yet hidden by the black curve of the vacuum-bag, the two moons were nearly at their fullest.
Microscopic creatures sparkled a hundred metres under the airship, great schools of them daubing
galaxies against the profound black of the sea. Spirals, flukes and arms of luminescence wheeled
and coiled as if in thrall to secret music.
Naqi looked to the rear, where the airship's ceramic-jacketed sensor pod carved a twinkling
furrow. Pinks and rubies and furious greens sparkled in the wake. Occasionally they darted from
point to point with the nervous motion of kingfishers. As ever, she was alert to anything unusual in
movements of the messenger sprites, anything that might merit a note in the latest circular, or even
a full-blown article in one of the major journals of Juggler studies. But there was nothing odd
happening tonight, no yet-to-be catalogued forms or behaviour patterns, nothing that might indicate
more significant Pattern Juggler activity.
She walked around the airship's balcony until she had reached the stern, where the submersible
sensor pod was tethered by a long fibre-optic dragline. Naqi pulled a long hinged stick from her
pocket, flicked it open in the manner of a courtesan's fan and then waved it close to the winch
assembly. The default watercoloured lilies and sea serpents melted away, replaced by tables of
numbers, sinuous graphs and trembling histograms. A glance established that there was nothing
surprising here either, but the data would still form a useful calibration set for other experiments.
As she closed the fan -- delicately, for it was worth almost as much as the airship itself – Naqi
reminded herself that it was a day since she had gathered the last batch of incoming messages. Rot
had taken out the connection between the antenna and the gondola during the last expedition, and
since then collecting the messages had become a chore, to be taken in turns or traded for less
tedious tasks.
Naqi gripped a handrail and swung out behind the airship. Here the vacuum-bag overhung the
gondola by only a metre, and a grilled ladder allowed her to climb around the overhang unravel and
scramble onto the flat top of the bag. She moved gingerly, bare feet against rusting rungs, doing her
best not to disturb Mina. The airship rocked and creaked a little as she found her balance on the top
and then was again silent and still. The churning of its motors was so quiet that Naqi had long ago
filtered the sound from her experience.
All was calm, beautifully so.
In the moonlight the antenna was a single dark flower rising from the broad back of the bladder.
Naqi started moving along the railed catwalk that led to it, steadying herself as she went but feeling
much less vertigo than would have been the case in daylight.
Then she froze, certain that she was being watched.
Just within Naqi's peripheral vision appeared a messenger sprite. It had flown to the height of the
airship and was now sprite. It had flown to the height of the airship and was now shadowing it from
a distance of ten or twelve metres. Naqi gasped, delighted and unnerved at the same time. Apart
from dead specimens this was the first time Naqi had ever seen a sprite this close. The organism had
the approximate size and morphology of a terrestrial hummingbird, yet it glowed like a lantern.