Spin Control

Начало книги

For Ruth Isaacs, Barbara Gotchman, Viola Davis, Nancy Rolnik, Jim Russell, and James Winston Morris.

Most books—certainly most science fiction novels—only exist because the right teachers came into some child’s life at the right time. For me, you were those teachers. The words “thank you” seem pretty inadequate, but they’re the only words I have. So…thank you.

She was probably no more than thirty.

It was hard to tell with humans. They all looked old to Arkady, and they aged fast out here in the Trusteeships where people lost months and years just getting from one planet to the next.

This human looked like she’d lived harder than most. Her skin was ravaged by decades of unfiltered sunlight, her face lined by wind and worry, her features gaunt with the gravity of some heavy planet. Still, Arkady didn’t think she could be more than a few subjective years beyond his twenty-seven.

“Act like you’re picking me up,” she said in a low husky voice that would have been sensual had it not been ratcheted tight by fear. She spoke UN-standard Spanish, but her flat vowels and guttural consonants betrayed her native tongue as Hebrew.

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