"Charles Stross - Missile Gap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

But back to the here-and-now: she’s sitting on the deck of an elderly ocean liner on her way from somewhere
to nowhere, and she’s annoyed because Bob is getting drunk with the F-deck boys again and eating into their
precious grubstake. It’s too dark to read the ship’s daily news sheet (mimeographed blurry headlines from a
world already fading into the ship’s wake), it’ll be at least two weeks before their next landfall (a refueling
depot somewhere in what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration surveyors–in a fit of
uncharacteristic wit–named the Nether Ocean), and she’s half out of her skull with boredom.
When they signed up for the Emigration Board tickets Bob had joked: “A six month cruise? After a vacation
like that we’ll be happy to get back to work!”–but somehow the sheer immensity of it all didn’t sink in until the
fourth week out of sight of land. In those four weeks they’d crawled an expanse of ocean wider than the
Pacific, pausing to refuel twice from huge rust-colored barges: and still they were only a sixth of the way to
Continent F-204, New Iowa, immersed like the ultimate non-sequitur in the ocean that replaced the world’s
horizons on October 2, 1962. Two weeks later they passed The Radiators. The Radiators thrust from the
oceanic depths to the stratosphere, Everest-high black fins finger-combing the watery currents. Beyond them
the tropical heat of the Pacific gave way to the sub-arctic chill of the Nether Ocean. Sailing between them,
the ship was reduced to the proportions of a cockroach crawling along a canyon between skyscrapers.
Maddy had taken one look at these guardians of the interplanetary ocean, shuddered, and retreated into their
cramped room for the two days it took to sail out from between the slabs.
Bob kept going on about how materials scientists from NOAA and the National Institutes were still trying to
understand what they were made of, until Maddy snapped at him. He didn’t seem to understand that they
were the bars on a prison cell. He seemed to see a waterway as wide as the English Channel, and a gateway
to the future: but Maddy saw them as a sign that her old life was over.
If only Bob and her father hadn’t argued; or if Mum hadn’t tried to pick a fight with her over Bob–Maddy leans
on the railing and sighs, and a moment later nearly jumps out of her skin as a strange man clears his throat
behind her.
“Excuse me, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“That’s alright,” Maddy replies, irritated and trying to conceal it. “I was just going in.”
“A shame: it’s a beautiful night,” says the stranger. He turns and puts down a large briefcase next to the
railing, fiddling with the latches. “Not a cloud in sight, just right for stargazing.” She focuses on him, seeing
short hair, small paunch, and a worried thirty-something face. He doesn’t look back, being preoccupied with
something that resembles a photographer’s tripod.
“Is that a telescope?” she asks, eyeing the stubby cylindrical gadget in his case.
“Yes.” An awkward pause. “Name’s John Martin. Yourself?”
“Maddy Holbright.” Something about his diffident manner puts her at ease. “Are you settling? I haven’t seen
you around.”
He straightens up and tightens joints on the tripod’s legs, screwing them into place. “I’m not a settler, I’m a
researcher. Five years, all expenses paid, to go and explore a new continent.” He carefully lifts the telescope
body up and lowers it onto the platform, then begins tightening screws. “And I’m supposed to point this thing
at the sky and make regular observations. I’m actually an entomologist, but there are so many things to do
that they want me to be a jack of all trades, I guess.”
“So they’ve got you to carry a telescope, huh? I don’t think I’ve ever met an entomologist before.”
“A bug-hunter with a telescope,” he agrees: “kind of unexpected.”
Intrigued, Maddy watches as he screws the viewfinder into place then pulls out a notebook and jots
something down. “What are you looking at?”
He shrugs. “There’s a good view of S-Doradus from here,” he says. “You know, Satan? And his two little
angels.”
Maddy glances up at the violent pinprick of light, then looks away before it can burn her eyes. It’s a star, but
bright enough to cast shadows from half a light year’s distance. “The disks?”
“Them.” There’s a camera body in his bag, a chunky old Bronica from back before the Soviets swallowed
Switzerland and Germany whole. He carefully screws it onto the telescope’s viewfinder. “The Institute wants
me to take a series of photographs of them–nothing fancy, just the best this eight-inch reflector can do–over