"Connie Willis - Uncharted Territory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

Carson and me, and how we'd corrupted the "simple, noble indigenous sentients," meaning Bult, which
was bad enough, but then she latched onto Bult and told him our presence "defiled the very atmosphere
of the planet," and Bult started trying to fine us for breathing.

"I laid the binocs right next to your bedroll, Fin," Carson said, reaching behind him to rummage in his
pack.

"Well, I never saw 'em."

"That's because you're half-blind," he said. "You can't even see a cloud of dust when it's coming right at
you."

Well, as a matter of fact, we'd been arguing long enough that now I could, a kicked-up line of pinkish
cloud close to the ridge.

"What do you think it is? A dust tantrum?" I said, even though a tantrum would've been meandering all
over the place, not keeping to a line.

"I don't know," he said, putting his hand up to shade his eyes. "A stampede maybe."

The only fauna around here were luggage, and they didn't stampede in dry weather like this, and anyway
the cloud wasn't wide enough for a stampede. It looked like the dust churned up by a rover, 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