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

Bult put down the umbrella and opened a big box of dice, which would make Carson happy. His favorite
occupation, next to blaming me, is shooting craps.

"Indidges can't incur fines!" I said.

"Inappropriate tone and manner," he said.
I was too tired for this, too, and I still had the reports and the whereabouts to do. I left him unpacking a
box of shower curtains and went across to the mess.

I opened the door. "Honey, I'm home," I called.

"Hello!" C.J. sang out cheerfully from the kitchen, which was a switch. "How was your expedition?"

She appeared in the doorway, smiling and wiping her hands on a towel. She was all done up, clean face
and fixed-up hair and a shirt that was open down to thirty degrees north. "Dinner's almost ready," she
said brightly, and then stopped and looked around. "Where's Evelyn?"

"Out in the stable," I said, dumping my stuff on a chair, "talking to Carson, the planetary surveyor. Did
you know we're famous?"

"You're filthy," she said. "And you're late. What on hell took you so long? Dinner's cold. I had it ready
two hours ago." She jabbed a finger at my stuff. "Get that dirty pack off the furniture. It's bad enough
putting up with dust tantrums without you two dragging in dirt."

I sat down and propped my legs up on the table. "And how was your day, sweetheart?" I said. "Get a
mud puddle named after you? Jump any loaners?"

"Very funny. Evelyn happens to be a very nice young man who understands what it's like to be all alone
on a planet for weeks at a time with nobody for hundreds of kloms and who knows what dangers lurking
out there—"

"Like losing that shirt," I said.

"You're not exactly in a position to criticize my clothes," she said. "When's the last time you changed
yours? What have you been doing, rolling in the mud? And get those boots off the furniture. They're
disgusting!" She smacked my legs with the dish towel.

This was as much fun as talking to Bult. If I was going to be raked over the coals, it might as well be by
the experts. I heaved myself out of the chair. "Any pursuants?"

"If you mean official reprimands, there are sixteen. They're on the computer." She went back to the
kitchen, her shirt flapping. "And get cleaned up. You're not coming to the table looking like that."

"Yes, dear," I said and went over to the console. I fed in the expedition report and took a look at the
subsurfaces I'd run in Sector 247-72, and then called up the pursuants.

There were the usual loving messages from Big Brother: we weren't covering enough sectors, we weren't
giving enough f-and-f indigenous names, we were incurring too many fines.

"Pursuant to language used by members of survey expeditions, such members will refrain from using