"Charles Stross - Love me" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Oshi only really grasped the immensity of what had happened on the third day after the
storm.

Awakening had been hard. She'd struggled up from the depths of a nightmarish dream in
which she recapitulated the events of her early adulthood: condemned to relive the horrific
awakening on Miramor Dubrovnic, then to undergo the hardening of the cynical shell that
had protected her until the fateful mission on New Salazar. It was like sleep-walking
through hard-setting clay, or struggling for breath beneath the cool suffocation of an
avalanche. Remembering when she'd had Ivan was the least of it: his loss was somewhat
faded now, a sepia photographic memory with edges too blunted to cut deep. (Her
childhood, by contrast, remained the only thing that could easily break through the armour
she wore.)

But on the third morning she had opened her eyes gasping, her arms outstretched before
her in the idiot zombie-posture of free fall relaxation. "Where is --" she began.

Axial redoubt command bunker. Status report available.

"That's --" she stopped and blinked, the thick encrustation of sleep heavy on her eye-
lashes. She could feel the uncomfortable intrusions of her exoskeleton, tubes probing deep
within to irrigate and clean and feed her body. " How long have I been asleep?"

Two days.

Two days. She felt as if it had been two hours. "What's happened?"

Radiation levels decreased to normal. External life support
remains down. External colony support is on criticality
rung seven of eight. Prognosis: this station will cease to
be habitable in the near future.

"Oh."

It was all she could think of to say. She glanced round, taking in the survival gear lockers,
the airlock leading up and out towards the manufacturing and docking complexes of the
hub: the huge monitor that covered the end-wall of the command bunker. "External
sensors," she mumbled. "Give me what rim coverage you can manage: I want to take a
look."


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Stross,%20Charles%20-%20loveme%20(ss).html (2 of 41)4-7-2007 2:25:53
4: Will you still love me ...

Affirmative. Viewport on main screen ...

Over the next hour, Oshi learned that she was alone. The radiation had killed off most of
the higher life forms in the colony. Insects survived, thriving on the corpses, but nothing
else above the level of a mouse had survived for long, except the tapeworm.