"Chris Roberson - Gold Mountain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberson Chris)

Gold Mountain
CHRIS ROBERSON
From Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection (2006)

New writer Chris Roberson has appeared in Postscripts, Asimov's, Argosy, Electric Velocipede,
Black October, Fantastic Metropolis, RevolutionSF, Twilight Tales, The Many Faces of Van
Helsing, and elsewhere. His first novel, Here, There & Everywhere, was released in 2005, and
coming up are Paragaea: A Planetary Romance and The Voyage of Night Shining White. In
addition to his writing, Roberson is one of the publishers of the lively small press MonkeyBrain
Books, and recently edited the "retro-pulp" anthology Adventure, Volume 1. He lives with his
family in Austin, Texas.

In the bittersweet story that follows, he shows us that sometimes you can't escape your roots, even
if you plant them deep in the soil of another world…

Johnston Lien stood at the open door of the tram, one elbow crooked around a guardrail, her blue eyes
squinting in the morning glare at the sky-piercing needle of the orbital elevator to the south. The sun was
in the Cold Dew position, early in the dog-month, when the temperature began to soar and the sunlight
burned brighter in the southern sky. Summer was not long off, and Lien hoped to be far from here before
it came. As the tram rumbled across the city of Nine Dragons, she turned her attention back to her notes,
checking the address of her last interviewee and reviewing the pertinent bits of data from their brief earlier
meeting.

Lien had been in Nine Dragons for well over three months, and was eager to return home to the north.
She didn't care for the climate this far south, the constant humidity of the sea air, the heat of the southern
sun. Nor did she have much patience for the laconic character of Guangdong, the endless farms
stretching out in every direction, the slow and simple country wisdom of the southern farmers. Lien was a
daughter of Beijing, the Northern Capital, and was accustomed to the hustle of crowded city streets, of
nights at the Royal Opera and afternoons in ornamental gardens, of dashing officers of the Eight Banners
Army and witty court scholars in their ruby-tipped hats. Nine Dragons, and the port city of Fragrant
Harbor across the bay, was filled with nothing but rustics, fishermen, district bureaucrats, and workmen.
The only people of culture who came through were travelers on their way to Gold Mountain, but they
passed through the city and to the base of the orbital elevator while scarcely looking left or right, and
before they'd had time to draw a breath of southern air into their lungs were onboard a gondola, rising up
along the electromagnetic rails of Gold Mountain, up the orbital tether of the Bridge of Heaven to the
orbiting city of Diamond Summit, thirty-six thousand kilometers overhead.

Johnston Lien was a researcher with the Historical Bureau of the Ministry of Celestial Excursion, and
today she'd make her final site visit and collect the last of the data needed for her project. She was part
of a group of scholars and researchers given the task of compiling a complete history of the early days of
space exploration, beginning with the inception of the Ministry of Celestial Excursion under the aegis of
the Xuantong Emperor in the previous century, and continuing straight through to the launch of the
Treasure Fleet to the red planet Fire Star, which began just weeks before. The history was to be
presented to the emperor in the Northern Capital when the final ship of the Treasure Fleet, a humble
water-tender christened Night Shining White, departed on its months' long voyage to the red planet.

The tram approached the eastern quarter of Nine Dragons, where the buildings of Ghost Town huddled
together over cramped streets, before the city gave way to docklands, and then to the open sea. Lien
returned her notes and disposable brush to her satchel, and chanced a slight smile. She'd already made
initial contact with this, her final interview subject, and once she'd finished with him, her work would be