"Charles Stross - Iron Sunrise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

 IRON SUNRISE - Charles Stross


she?"
"Kids!" It came out like a curse, though it wasn't intended as one. "No, I don't think she's that stupid. But
she's not on the ship, either, or at least she's turned off her implants—Constable Klein sent out a
broadcast ping for her an hour ago. And she seemed upset about something this morning."
"Shit. Implants, huh? I'll put out a notice, all right? Things are insane around here right now. Have you
any idea what it's like trying to rehouse fifteen thousand people? She'll probably turn up somewhere she
isn't meant to be, crew service areas or something. Or decided to hitch a lift on Sikorsky's Dream for the
hell of it, before she undocked. She'll turn up, that I promise you. Full ID, please?"
"Victoria Strowger. Age sixteen. ID 3 of that name."
"Ah, okay." Ito made an odd series of gestures with the rings on his right hand, tracing runes in
copspace. "Okay, if she's somewhere aboard this pile of junk, that should find her. If not, it'll escalate to
a general search in about ten minutes. Now if you'll excuse me until then—"
"Certainly." Morris Strowger sidled away from the Constable's desk. "She's probably just dropped her
badge down the toilet," he muttered to himself. Behind him the next in the queue, an elderly woman,
was haranguing the Constable about the size of her accommodation module: she refused to believe that
her apartment—one human-sized cell in a five-thousand-person honeycomb of refugee pods slung in the
cargo bay of the New Dresden freighter Long March—was all any of them would get until arrival in the
nearest Septagon system. The relocation was paid for, gratis, courtesy of the (new) New Dresden
government, and the residual assets of the Republic of Moscow's balance of trade surplus, but the pods
weren't exactly the presidential suite of a luxury liner. 1 hope Vicki gets tired of hiding soon. Maybe it'll
do her some good if the Constabulary find her first and run her in. Teach her not to go looking for
trouble in the middle of an emergency …


IMPACT: T plus 1390 days
Take a girl like that. Pallid complexion, cropped mop of black hair, pale blue eyes: waif or demon? She
was a bit of a loner. Preternaturally smart for her age: her parents planned her, used a sensible modicum
of predictive genomics to avoid the more serious pitfalls. Paid for the most expensive interface implants
they could buy, imported from Septagon: they wanted only the best for her. She was seventeen and
sullen, going through one of those phases. Refusing to wear anything but black, spending her free time
poking around in strange service ducts, training an eighteen-million-synapse nerve garden in her
bedroom (parents didn't even want to think about what she might be training it to dream of). She grew
plants: deadly nightshade, valerian, aconite, hemlock—and what were they going to do with the latter

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 IRON SUNRISE - Charles Stross


when it reached full height? (Nobody knew. Nobody knows.) She liked listening to depressing music in
her room with the door shut. Her anxious parents shoehorned her into the usual healthy outdoor pursuits
—climbing lessons, solar sailing, karate—but none of them took a grip on her imagination. Her legal
forename was Victoria, but the other teens all called her Wednesday; she hated it, but not as much as she
hated her given name.
Wednesday was a misfit. Like misfits from time immemorial, she'd had an invisible friend since she was
young: they played together, exploring the espionage envelope. Elevator surfing. Duct diving—with an
oxy mask; you could never tell what might be on the other side of a sealed bulkhead. But most kids
didn't have invisible friends who talked back via the expensive net implants their parents had shelled out