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

it, and a blank frame that could pretend to be a window. Holograms could hang there,
illusory worldscapes for the homesick; Oshi wanted none of that. She shuddered for a
moment, clenching her eyes tightly shut against the emptiness, then snapped her fingers.
A sink extruded from one wall and she let it wash and clean her face with expert,
impersonal hands. After it dried her with a fresh, unscented towel, it brushed and styled
her hair as she liked it: short, sleek, and aggressive. Better, she thought, yawning at her
reflection in its monitor: I almost look human. She tried to smile at herself then winced,
remembering the pale vulnerabilities of night. It still took her breath away, her own casual
acceptance of vision. She dressed in silence, equipping herself for the day ahead.

Helmut was waiting outside. He took her arm and tried to lead her: "please let go," she
said, so impersonally that he dropped it as if she'd stung him.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You want to eat before talking to ..? I find it makes it easier ..."

"I'll dine later," she said automatically. "You haven't filled me in on the situation."

He seemed surprised. "I thought you'd have checked the news," he said.

Now she did smile; sour as a lemon and twice as sharp. "Bad news I prefer to hear from
human lips. It's more personal that way."

The architecture of the station was customised to fit the vasculature of a hollowed-out
asteroid, a design perfected through many generations of development and
experimentation. It resembled a mass of trees and diamond bubbles: big trees, gene-
restricted to grow out rather than up, that filled the troglodyte caverns and ulcerous
tunnels with an explosion of foliage. Butterflies flickered between blossoming orchids and
creeping convolvulus, their wings moving lazily in the low-gee environment of the
spinning rock. From the outside the base resembled a cinder, dark and angular in the harsh
perspectives of vacuum; stealth screens concealed the subterranean eden within.

The corridor looped right round the equator of the station, curved to follow the shell of the
hollowed-out asteroid as it looped back on itself. Indirect lights shed a pearly glow across
a carpet of living fur. The slow thermal roll of the structure provided a semblance of
gravity beneath Oshi's feet. But the tranquility of the station was broken today; she ducked
to one side as a convoy of drones whined past along the emergency rail overhead. "What's

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2: In the Duat

happening?"

Helmut peeled himself off the opposite wall and shook imaginary dust from one sleeve.
He glanced back down the corridor. "Must be busy, I imagine. Overflow from the service
ducts. We'd better --" His eyes unfocused.

Oshi caught it moments later: a whispering at her inner ear as cellular network relays
dumped incoming news into her wisdom receptacle. The transceivers, cheap as flies and
twice as ubiquitous, scattered data like dust throughout the colony: the flipside of their
duty to upload digitized mind-maps. The news chittered for attention; Oshi blinked,