[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

prosperity, civil international relations, and silence from the Mideast Sweep.
All of that had changed.
Starfarer had to change, too.
Griffith's job would have been much easier if he had not had to deal with thz
researchers, the stubborn, self-centered idealists. As the starship had to
change, the people had to change, too.
If Griffith coufd arrange to antagonize a few more countries into withdrawing
from the expedition, the remaining person-
nel would not be able to continue alone.
He was doing a good job. No one would fault him for giving himself a few
minutes. He wanted to get Cherenkov to talk about his experiences, and he knew
it would not be easy. The general obviously felt no nostalgia for the past.
Griffith held no power over this man; he could not demand a reply. He would
have to be patient.
122 Vonda N. Mclntyre
Kolya wished the young officer would follow someone else.
It mattered little to him if Griffith were here under false pre-
tenses. Kolya ignored politics with the strength of visceral aversion. He
hated politics almost as much as he hated vio-
lence.
He also did not like to be followed. Nikolai Petrovich Che-
renkov had been followed by people who wanted to kill him and by people who
wanted to worship him. The two experi-
ences were not all that different.
He had become more and more private over the past two decades. One morning in
the company of Infinity Mendez and Floris Brown tired him to a startling
degree. The effort
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Vonda%20N%20McIntyre%20-%20Starfarer
s.txt (103 of 240) [11/1/2004 12:30:55 AM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Vonda%20N%20McIntyre%20-%20Starfarer
s.txt of remaining civil, pleasant, even cheerful, had drained him of the
anticipatory energy he experienced before his space-
walks. Human contact affected him with a kind of sensory overload that only
the emptiness and completeness of space could overcome.
Kotya entered the elevator to the outside, hoping Griffith would remain at the
inner surface.
"It is boring and dark down there," Kolya said. "Unpleas-
Page 82
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
ant. Stay in the sunshine."
"It's all right," Marion Griffith said. "I want to see." The officer stayed
with him.
Griffith made Kolya uncomfortable. He showed too much interest in Cherenkov's
past. But Cherenkov did not exist any-
more. Only Kolya existed. Kolya was not a pioneering cos-
monaut or a heroic antiterrorist or a terrorist traitor. Kolya was an old man
who loved space.
The elevator fell through the inner skin of fertile dirt, through the
underground water level, through the massive radiation-slopping shell of lunar
rock.
Paying Griffith no more attention, Kolya analyzed his rea-
sons for letting Infinity persuade him to talk to Floris Brown.
What did it matter to Kolya if she lived on the bottom level of his hill, or
in the guesthouse, or back on earth, or out in the garden in the dew?
Thanthavong never bothered him
she was no recluse, but she did spend all her time in the genetics lab. That
was what she had come up here for, after all, to escape the demands of
achievement and publicity and
STARFARERS 123
public adoration, to get on with her work. Like Kolya, but with more meaning
to her life.
A lonely old woman living downstairs would demand at-
tention, whether from Kolya or from others who would visit.
Kolya could see nothing coming from the change but an in-
vasion of his privacy.
He felt no obligation to offer anything to Floris, but Infinity was different.
Kolya thought Infinity was far more admirable than any of the scientists, who
worked in their minds, or he himself, who did not work at all anymore, except
at tasks he chose, tasks that took him into space. It would have been possible
to program an AS to do most of what Kolya chose to do, and an AI to do the
rest. But no one had ever suc-
ceeded in programming an expert system to replicate a master gardener. To
approximate, yes. Not to replicate. There was something about technological
complexity, mechanical com-
plexity, that machines could handle, and something about or-
ganic and aesthetic complexity that befuddled them. Kolya thought the
gardeners, like Infinity, to be the most important people on board the
starship.
The elevator stopped. Assuming a strong young military officer would be
embarrassed to have his discomfort noticed, Kolya said nothing to explain the
strange sensation produced
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Vonda%20N%20McIntyre%20-%20Starfarer
s.txt (104 of 240) [11/1/2004 12:30:55 AM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Vonda%20N%20McIntyre%20-%20Starfarer
s.txt by riding an elevator through a rotating environment. If Grif-
fith had neglected to read his introduction manual on the way to Starfarer,
that was his problem.
The artificial gravity was perceptibly stronger here, nearly one g. The radius
of the cylinder's outer skin was significantly longer than the distance from
the axis to the inner surface.
The increased radial acceleration increased the sensation of weight.
At the outer surface of the cylinder, the corridors were solid, rough, and
ugly. Few people came this far down. If they wanted to spacewalk, they went
out at the axis and avoided the rotation. Kolya liked the rotation. He climbed
into his pressure suit as Griffith watched.
"That doesn't look too hard," Griffith said, breaking the silence for the
first time since they left the inner surface.
Page 83
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"How long does the training take?"
Kolya had already drifted into the strange and vulnerable state to which he
surrendered in space. Without a word, he
124 vonda N. Mclntyre stepped into the airiock and sealed it, leaving Griffith
behind as abruptly as he had left Floris and Infinity.
The pump drew the air from the lock and back into the ship- Surrounded by
vacuum, Kolya opened the outer hatch.
He let the radial acceleration press him past the skin of the cylinder and
into the harder vacuum of space. With the ease of long practice, he lowered
himself onto the narrow frame-
work that crept over the cylinder's surface. He stood in the same orientation
as he had inside the cylinder, with his head toward the axis of rotation. The
outer skin of the cylinder lay a couple of meters above him. Nothing separated
him from space except the cables of the inspection net.
Beneath him, the wild cylinder and the furled sail slipped past. Kolya sank to
his knees, then inched fiat. He let his arms dangle toward the stars. Someday,
he thought, he would let himself slip from the framework and be flung away
into space. But not quite yet. He was not quite ready yet.
Rotation took him out from between the cylinders. Before him, the stars made a
fine, spangled sheet.
He lay there, still and silent, staring at the galaxy.
The transparent skin of the sailhouse placed no barrier be-
tween the room, and space and stars and the sail outside.
People floated in zero-gravity along one side of the curved glass wall: fewer
people than should have gathered to watch the first full test of Starfwer's
solar sail.
Satoshi floated farther into the transparent chamber. The sensors surrounded
him with melodic chords. Iphigenie
DuPre, the sailmaster, drifted with eyes closed, listening to the musical
reports, invisibly connected to the computers and control strands of the sail.
Her long, lithe, dark limbs reacted with reflexive, minuscule motions as she
ordered a strand tightened here, balanced there.
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Vonda%20N%20McIntyre%20-%20Starfarer
s.txt (105 of 240) [11/1/2004 12:30:55 AM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Vonda%20N%20McIntyre%20-%20Starfarer
s.txt
The sail, untwisting from its cable configuration, now ap- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

  • zanotowane.pl
  • doc.pisz.pl
  • pdf.pisz.pl
  • moje-waterloo.xlx.pl

    •