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

at least, can ignore the saturated silent roar of wisdom. The alarm is so dumb it doesn't even realise that
nobody's listening. I fumble in the grainy dimness, ripping open the flap and pulling out the hard metal
machine inside. It's a concussion bolter, a nasty shipboard security device -- incapable of penetrating the
hull, a shock weapon capable of pulsing flesh into mangled jelly on contact. Single shot. I feel queasy just
thinking about it. I know I've killed before, but I have a feeling that this is going to be different. Someone
I probably know has been parasitized by a fragment of the Boss's imagination. I stare at the contents of
the cupboard for a moment, but there's nothing else in there worth taking but the torch. Every moment I
delay is ... well. I grab the torch, glance over my shoulder to locate the manual door handle, then shut it
off.
Darkness again.

I fumble the handle, get hold of it, and crack the seal. No light. It must be as dark in the access tunnel as
it is on the bridge. And cool, growing colder. There's no noise of circulating air.

Push. Was it like this so long ago? Misty unbreathed air rimes my nostrils like frost. It is getting cold.
The heat exchangers must be down. I can imagine myself again, unable to see, a little girl cowering behind
a mud hovel, wondering if she is to be beaten tonight. It's so long ago that it feels as if the memory
belongs to another person -- all except the pain. The bolter is a heavy lump in my left hand. I slide the
door open until I can feel the edge; then I slip through. There's a grabrail on the opposite wall and I drift
for a heart-stopping second until I fetch up against solid metal with a jarring thump. Stupid, too hard.
Where's Raisa? I try to remember. I want to check on her, see she's alright. There are two rooms.
Radial, around the passage. Which way? If that was the door, it must be ...

Squeak.

I'm flat against the wall -- don't know how I did it in total silence -- nothing's doing. That may have been
a door opening. The bridge door? Maybe. I can't feel any air movements. There's nobody breathing but
me. For a moment I think I'm back in the dark tunnels under Dragulic. But I know where the doors are,
this time. Ivan isn't here, but my lover is safe. No fiery pillar of smoke, no shockwaves pumping through
the sewers. Up to my right. Near where I've gone to ground, there's a movement.

I stay frozen forever, until black spots dance in the night before my eyes. When I finally have to breathe I
raise one hand to my mouth, draw great juddering gulps of air and hyperventilate until blotches of silver
saturate my vision and I feel dizzy. Then I reach out with numb fingers and take hold of the grabrail. I
drag myself slowly along, trying to figure which room to eyeball first. I tend to drift in the microgee field,
and it's hard to tell where I am, but I don't dare use the torch yet. I'm alone in this tunnel, and yet
something warns me I'm in danger. What's going on? Why are the lights down? Is the Boss really making
an end run or am I jumping at shadows?

The cold bites at my bones as my fingers grip the end of the rail, where it vanishes into nothing. There
could be anything here. An endless void into which I would fall like a stone, a discontinuity, a place in
which dreams come alive and the shadow of Anubis stretches overhead. I shudder. I ask myself, why
didn't I start asking questions sooner? But the question comes years too late. I raise the torch and hold
it next to the bolter then, just for a moment, blink it on.

I'm a fly -- and I'm about to fall into a giant's pupil.

It's the tunnel. I'm on the edge of the abyss; it stretches ahead of me for twenty metres, narrowing to a
black vanishing point. Sick green shadows, ghastly reflections. I see myself in a burnished hatch cover: I
look like death's envoy, holes instead of eye sockets. Flick and the torch is out. I saw the doors. One of