"Connie Willis - Futures Imperfect" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

or a gate opening.

I kicked my terminal on and asked for whereabouts on the gatecrashers. I'd shown Wulfmeier on
Dazil yesterday when Carson'd been so set on going after him, and now the whereabouts showed
him on Starting Gate, which meant he probably wasn't either place. But he'd have to be crazy to open
a gate this close to King's X, even if there was anything underneath here—which there wasn't, I'd
already run terrains and subsurfaces—especially knowing we were on our way home.

I squinted at the dust, wondering if I should ask for a verify. I could see now it was moving fast,
which meant it wasn't a gate, or a pony, and the dust was too low for the heli. "Looks like the rover,"
I said. "Maybe the new loaner—what was her name? Ernestine?—is as jumped for you as you are
for her, and she's coming out here to meet you. You better comb your mustache."

He wasn't paying any attention. He was still rummaging in his pack, looking for the binocs. "I laid
'em right next to your bedroll when you were loading the ponies."

"Well, I didn't see 'em," I said, watching the dust. It was a good thing it wasn't a stampede, it would
have run us over while we stood there arguing about the binocs. "Maybe Bult took 'em."

"Why on hell would Bult take 'em?" Carson bellowed. "His are a hell of a lot fancier than ours."

They were, with selective scans and programmed polarizers, and Bult had hung them around the
second joint of his neck and was peering through them at the dust. I rode up next to him. "Can you
see what's making the dust?" I asked.

He didn't take the binocs down from his eyes. "Disturbance of land surface," he said severely. "Fine
of one hundred."

I should've known it. Bult could've cared less about what was making the dust so long as he could
get a fine out of it. "You can't fine us for dust unless we make it," I said. "Give me the binocs."

He bent his neck double, took the binocs off, and handed them to me, and then hunched over his log
again. "Forcible confiscation of property," he said into his log. "Twenty-five."

"Confiscation!" I said. "You're not going to fine me with confiscating anything. I asked if I could
borrow them."

"Inappropriate tone and manner in speaking to an indigenous person," he said into the log. "Fifty."

I gave up and put the binocs up to my eyes. The cloud of dust looked like it was right on top of me,
but no clearer. I upped the resolution and took another look. "It's the rover," I called to Carson,
who'd gotten off his pony and was taking everything out of his pack.

"Who's driving?" he said. "C.J.?"

I hit the polarizers to screen out the dust and took another look. "What'd you say this loaner's name

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Futures Imperfect