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

You know nothing. Yes, but how am I going to adjust? What had happened on the station
in orbit about New Salazar was bad enough that if she stopped to think about it she could
work herself into a screaming fit: but this was worse in a way. Totally disorientating.

Oshi sat back. "What did I expect?" she asked the air. It seemed like a good question to
start with. Vague visions of meeting the Superbright who ran the colony mission danced
through her head; another creature of the same species as the Boss, she supposed. But this
-- a war evacuation -- she'd never heard of such a thing before. An evacuation from a rich
world too, not a dirt-poor backwater farmed by cynical Superbrights, but a puissant and
sophisticated Centreworld! "What is the universe coming to?" she whispered. "Shit."

Her bowl was empty, her belly was full, and her body was telling her it was time to sleep.

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2: In the Duat

Oshi stood up and pushed her chair back. Absent mindedly, she realised that she was still
holding her spoon. I think tomorrow I will obtain some answers, she resolved. As she
turned to leave she put the spoon down. It clattered oddly when it touched the table: she
glanced back and saw it lying next to her bowl, the stem bent at right-angles where she
had gripped it.

Slowly, a smile spread across her face. Yes, I think I will obtain some answers
tomorrow ...

Dawn throughout the entire colony was postponed for an hour while the Goon Squad
tracked down the new arrival. Word had gone out: Anubis, the dog-head, wanted to see
her. Nobody tried to warn Oshi; the presence of the Good Squad was an automatic curfew
that nobody in their right mind would dare to break. So she was still asleep when they
broke down her door and jabbed their guns in her face.

Jolted awake by a presence leaning over her, Oshi opened her eyes and began to shove the
sheet down -- then froze in mid-gesture. Sudden terror leered down at her. The Squaddie
waved the muzzle of its gun around: "you to get dressed!" it crowed, rearing up on its
hindmost six legs. " Il Duce see you!"

What the fuck ... gut-deep coldsweat fear swept up her spine. Her eyeballs flicked to
infrared, EM, other spectra in a blur of raw information, taking in too many eyes, limbs,
tentacles, something like a small cannon pointing at her face and a hole where the door
had been, an acrid gunpowder smell in her nostrils --

" You to get dressed!" repeated the monster, backing up a few centimetres. " The Man see
you!" An angry chitter echoed from the corridor behind it.

Confused and scared, Oshi scrambled back into the farmost corner of the room, jammed
up against the wall. Her head felt like fog, decaying, acrid -- or was that the smell of the
thing in the doorway --

The thing was pointing a gun at her. It would probably be a good idea to do as it said.