"Charles Stross - Duat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Ridgegap-47. A system that had all but dropped off the Dreamtime net. It was still there,
low-level transponders answering queries, but nothing was coming out of it. She tried to
open her throat and laugh, but found herself coughing frantically instead. There was no
air, only sludge: she was bringing up a horrible slime.

So this is what it was like to be born, she thought, not for the first time.

"It will run out faster if you don't lift your head," someone advised her. A hand pressed
down gently at the nape of her neck. She coughed again, and a trickle came out.

"Oh ... " she groaned. There was light behind her eyelids. She opened them and the hands
helped her to sit up. Reality crashed down like a sky full of monsoon rain.

She lay on a cushion in a very cramped box of a room with no windows and just one door.
She had a body and it was equipped with the usual compliment of aches, pains and
insubordinate ganglia; all of them were shouting at her. She was tired. The light above her
was too harsh and the person helping her upright was holding her too tight and her head
was spinning. Something was wrong. There wasn't meant to be anyone here, just drones
and a Superbright. She tried to shake her head; her ears didn't hurt any more, but that
wasn't it. Wisdom: she tried to twitch it into place but it slid away, semi-formed neural
pathways eluding her mental grip. Damn, just like being born again. That goddess, living,
bursting out of her father's skull in a shower of gore, fully grown --

She sat up. Her throat tickled as if something was stuck in it. The light was dim,
monochrome patterns of shade sliding across grey-brown surfaces all around. There was a
woman with her whose eyes were shrouded by the plastic sweep of a set of ancient data
goggles: apart from a spiky coif of black hair, the rest of her was concealed by a white
overall that had seen better days. Her hands steadied Oshi's shoulders as she gave in to a
spasm of coughing. "Aagh ..."

"Take it easy. Our facilities are limited here -- if you start choking I'll have to perform a
tracheotomy." Oshi coughed again, harder -- and something came up. She spat it out
disgusted. "Hey, that's better. You feel any better yet? Here, blow into this."

Oshi took the mouthpiece and emptied her lungs into it. She wheezed painfully. "That's
good!" said the woman. "You're breathing. Way cool. Can't tell with this fucking 'coder,
there's a bug in the homoeobox accelerator, some of us came out with gills instead of
lungs ..."


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Stross,%20Charles%20-%20Duat%20(ss).html (17 of 103)4-7-2007 2:25:58
2: In the Duat


"Gaah." Oshi cleared her throat. "Who are you? Where am I?" Everything settled into
place around her. Your next mission, should you choose to accept it --

"I'm Raisa Marikova. According to your tag you are, Oshi Adjani? That right?" She
reached up and yanked her goggles down until they hung around her neck, revealing a pair
of dark eyes that focussed on Oshi with an almost obsessive intensity.