Robert Charles Wilson - Spin

VIP免费

2024-12-19 0 0 773.75KB 382 页 5.9玖币

Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin

SPIN

Robert Charles Wilson

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Hugo%202006%20Winner%20No...0Robert%20Charles%20-%20Spin%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (1 of 382)8-12-2006 23:45:59

Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin

Hugo Award Winner for Best Novel 2006

By Robert Charles Wilson from Tom Doherty Associates

A Hidden Place

Darwinia

Bios

The Perseids and Other Stories

The Chronoliths

Blind Lake

Spin

SPIN

ROBERT CHARLES WILSON

TOR®

ATOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Hugo%202006%20Winner%20No...0Robert%20Charles%20-%20Spin%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (2 of 382)8-12-2006 23:45:59

Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported

as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this

"stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's

imagination or are used fictitiously.

SPIN

Edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

Fifth Avenue

New York, NY

www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 0-765-34825-X EAN 978-0-765-34825-

First edition: April

First mass market edition: February

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

4X109 A.D.

The Big House

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Hugo%202006%20Winner%20No...0Robert%20Charles%20-%20Spin%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (3 of 382)8-12-2006 23:45:59

Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin

Time Out of Joint

4X109 A.D.

Rumors of Apocalypse Reach the Berkshires

No Single Thing Abides

4X109 A.D.

Unquiet Nights

Under the Skin

Celestial Gardening

Snapshots of the Ecopoiesis

4X109 A.D.

Hospitality

Four Photographs of the Kirioloj Delta

4X109 A.D.

The Cold Places of the Universe

Sacrificial Rites

The Ticking of Expensive Clocks

4X109 A.D.

Desperate Euphoria

Home Before Dark

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Hugo%202006%20Winner%20No...0Robert%20Charles%20-%20Spin%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (4 of 382)8-12-2006 23:45:59

Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin

4X109 A.D.

By Dreams Surrounded

The Morning and the Evening

Spin

The Abyss in Flames

Ars Moriendi

4X109 A.D. / We All Land Somewhere

North of Anywhere

Acknowledgments

SPIN

4X109 A.D.

Everybody falls, and we all land somewhere. So we rented a room on the third floor of a colonial-style

hotel in Padang where we wouldn't be noticed for a while.

Nine hundred euros a night bought us privacy and a balcony view of the Indian Ocean. During pleasant

weather, and there had been no shortage of that over the last few days, we could see the nearest part of

the Archway: a cloud-colored vertical line that rose from the horizon and vanished, still rising, into blue

haze. As impressive as this seemed, only a fraction of the whole structure was visible from the west

coast of Sumatra. The Archway's far leg descended to the undersea peaks of the Carpenter Ridge more

than a thousand kilometers away, spanning the Mentawai Trench like a wedding band dropped edge-up

into a shallow pond. On dry land, it would have reached from Bombay on the eastern coast of India to

Madras on the west. Or, say, very roughly, New York to Chicago.

Diane had spent most of the afternoon on the balcony, sweating in the shade of a faded striped umbrella.

The view fascinated her, and I was pleased and relieved that she was— after everything that had

happened—still capable of taking such pleasure in it.

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Hugo%202006%20Winner%20No...0Robert%20Charles%20-%20Spin%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (5 of 382)8-12-2006 23:45:59

Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin

I joined her at sunset. Sunset was the best time. A freighter heading down the coast to the port of Teluk

Bayur became a necklace of lights in the offshore blackness, effortlessly gliding. The near leg of the

Arch gleamed like a burnished red nail pinning sky to sea. We watched the Earth's shadow climb the

pillar as the city grew dark.

It was a technology, in the famous quotation, "indistinguishable from magic." What else but magic

would allow the uninterrupted flow of air and sea from the Bay of Bengal to the Indian Ocean but would

transport a surface vessel to far stranger ports? What miracle of engineering permitted a structure with a

radius of a thousand kilometers to support its own weight? What was it made of, and how did it do what

it did?

Perhaps only Jason Lawton could have answered those questions. But Jason wasn't with us.

Diane slouched in a deck chair, her yellow sundress and comically wide straw hat reduced by the

gathering darkness to geometries of shadow. Her skin was clear, smooth, nut brown. Her eyes caught the

last light very fetchingly, but her look was still wary—that hadn't changed.

She glanced up at me. "You've been fidgeting all day."

"I'm thinking of writing something," I said. "Before it starts. Sort of a memoir."

"Afraid of what you might lose? But that's unreasonable, Tyler. It's not like your memory's being erased."

No, not erased; but potentially blurred, softened, defocused. The other side effects of the drug were

temporary and endurable, but the possibility of memory loss terrified me.

"Anyway," she said, "the odds are in your favor. You know that as well as anyone. There is a risk… but

it's only a risk, and a pretty minor one at that."

And if it had happened in her case maybe it had been a blessing.

"Even so," I said. "I'd feel better writing something down."

"If you don't want to go ahead with this you don't have to. You'll know when you're ready."

"No, I want to do it." Or so I told myself.

"Then it has to start tonight."

"I know. But over the next few weeks—"

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Hugo%202006%20Winner%20No...0Robert%20Charles%20-%20Spin%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (6 of 382)8-12-2006 23:45:59

Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin

"You probably won't feel like writing."

"Unless I can't help myself." Graphomania was one of the less alarming of the potential side effects.

"See what you think when the nausea hits." She gave me a consoling smile. "I guess we all have

something we're afraid to let go of."

It was a troubling comment, one I didn't want to think about. "Look," I said, "maybe we should just get

started." The air smelled tropical, tinged with chlorine from the hotel pool three stories down. Padang

was a major international port these days, full of foreigners: Indians, Filipinos, Koreans, even stray

Americans like Diane and me, folks who couldn't afford luxury transit and weren't qualified for U.N.

approved resettlement programs. It was a lively but often lawless city, especially since the New

Reformasi had come to power in Jakarta.

But the hotel was secure and the stars were out in all their scattered glory. The peak of the Archway was

the brightest thing in the sky now, a delicate silver letter U (Unknown, Unknowable) written upside

down by a dyslexic God. I held Diane's hand while we watched it fade.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"The last time I saw the old constellations." Virgo, Leo, Sagittarius: the astrologer's lexicon, reduced to

footnotes in a history book.

"They would have been different from here, though, wouldn't they? The southern hemisphere?" I

supposed they would.

Then, in the full darkness of the night, we went back into the room. I switched on the room lights while

Diane pulled the blinds and unpacked the syringe and ampoule kit I had taught her to use. She filled the

sterile syringe, frowned and tapped out a bubble. She looked professional, but her hand was trembling. I

took off my shirt and stretched out on the bed.

"Tyler—"

Suddenly she was the reluctant one. "No second thoughts," I said. "I know what I'm getting into. And

we've talked this through a dozen times."

She nodded and swabbed the inside of my elbow with alcohol. She held the syringe in her right hand,

point up. The small quantity of fluid in it looked as innocent as water.

"That was a long time ago," she said.

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Hugo%202006%20Winner%20No...0Robert%20Charles%20-%20Spin%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (7 of 382)8-12-2006 23:45:59

Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin

"What was?"

"When we looked at the stars that time."

"I'm glad you haven't forgotten."

"Of course I haven't forgotten. Now make a fist."

The pain was trivial. At least at first.

THE BIG HOUSE

I was twelve, and the twins were thirteen, the night the stars disappeared from the sky.

It was October, a couple of weeks before Halloween, and the three of us had been ordered to the

basement of the Lawton house—the Big House, we called it—for the duration of an adults-only social

event.

Being confined to the basement wasn't any kind of punishment. Not for Diane and Jason, who spent

much of their time there by choice; certainly not for me. Their father had announced a strictly defined

border between the adults' and the children's zones of the house, but we had a high-end gaming platform,

movies on disk, even a pool table… and no adult supervision apart from one of the regular caterers, a

Mrs. Truall, who came downstairs every hour or so to dodge canape duty and give us updates on the

party. (A man from Hewlett-Packard had disgraced himself with the wife of a Post columnist. There was

a drunken senator in the den.) All we lacked, Jason said, was silence (the upstairs system was playing

dance music that came through the ceiling like an ogre's heartbeat) and a view of the sky.

Silence and a view: Jase, typically, had decided he wanted both.

Diane and Jason had been born minutes apart but were obviously fraternal rather than identical siblings;

no one but their mother called them twins. Jason used to say they were the product of "dipolar sperm

penetrating oppositely charged eggs." Diane, whose IQ was nearly as impressive as Jason's but who kept

her vocabulary on a shorter leash, compared them to "different prisoners who escaped from the same

cell."

I was in awe of them both.

Jason, at thirteen, was not only scary-smart but physically fit—not especially muscular but vigorous and

often successful at track and field. He was nearly six feet tall even then, skinny, his gawky face

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Hugo%202006%20Winner%20No...0Robert%20Charles%20-%20Spin%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (8 of 382)8-12-2006 23:45:59

Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin

redeemed by a lopsided and genuine smile. His hair, in those days, was blond and wiry.

Diane was five inches shorter, plump only by comparison with her brother, and darker skinned. Her

complexion was clear except for the freckles that ringed her eyes and gave her a hooded look: My

raccoon mask, she used to say. What I liked most about Diane—and I had reached an age when these

details had taken on a poorly understood but undeniable significance—was her smile. She smiled rarely

but spectacularly. She was convinced her teeth were too prominent (she was wrong), and she had picked

up the habit of covering her mouth when she laughed. I liked to make her laugh, but it was her smile I

secretly craved.

Last week Jason's father had given him a pair of expensive astronomical binoculars. He had been

fidgeting with them all evening, taking sightings on the framed travel poster over the TV, pretending to

spy on Cancun from the suburbs of Washington, until at last he stood up and said, "We ought to go look

at the sky."

"No," Diane said promptly. "It's cold out there."

"But clear. It's the first clear night this week. And it's only chilly."

"There was ice on the lawn this morning."

"Frost," he countered.

"It's after midnight."

"It's Friday night."

"We're not supposed to leave the basement."

"We're not supposed to disturb the party. Nobody said anything about going outside. Nobody will see us,

if you're afraid of getting caught."

"I'm not afraid of getting caught."

"So what are you afraid of?"

"Listening to you babble while my feet freeze."

Jason turned to me. "How about you, Tyler? Want to see some sky?"

The twins often asked me to referee their arguments, much to my discomfort. It was a no-win

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Hugo%202006%20Winner%20No...0Robert%20Charles%20-%20Spin%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (9 of 382)8-12-2006 23:45:59

Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin

proposition. If I sided with Jason I might alienate Diane; but if I sided too often with Diane it would

look… well, obvious. I said, "I don't know, Jase, it is pretty chilly outside…"

It was Diane who let me off the hook. She put a hand on my shoulder and said, "Never mind. I suppose a

little fresh air is better than listening to him complain."

So we grabbed our jackets from the basement hallway and left by the back door.

The Big House wasn't as grandiose as our nickname for it implied, but it was larger than the average

home in this middling-high-income neighborhood and it sat on a bigger parcel of land. A great rolling

expanse of manicured lawn gave way, behind it, to an uncultivated stand of pines bordering a mildly

polluted creek. Jason chose a spot for stargazing halfway between the house and the woods.

The month of October had been pleasant until yesterday, when a cold front had broken the back of

Indian summer. Diane made a show of hugging her ribs and shivering, but that was only to chastise

Jason. The night air was merely cool, not unpleasant. The sky was crystalline and the grass was

reasonably dry, though there might be frost again by morning. No moon and not a trace of cloud. The

Big House was lit up like a Mississippi steamboat and cast its fierce yellow glare across the lawn, but we

knew from experience that on nights like this, if you stood in the shadow of a tree, you'd disappear as

absolutely as if you had fallen into a black hole.

Jason lay on his back and aimed his binoculars at the starry sky.

I sat cross-legged next to Diane and watched as she took from her jacket pocket a cigarette, probably

stolen from her mother. (Carol Lawton, a cardiologist and nominal ex-smoker, kept packs of cigarettes

secreted in her dresser, her desk, a kitchen drawer. My mother had told me this.) She put it to her lips

and lit it with a translucent red lighter—the flame was momentarily the brightest thing around—and

exhaled a plume of smoke that swirled briskly into the darkness.

She caught me watching her. "You want a drag?"

"He's twelve years old," Jason said. "He has enough problems. He doesn't need lung cancer."

"Sure," I said. It was a point of honor now.

Diane, amused, passed me the cigarette. I inhaled tentatively and managed not to choke.

She took it back. "Don't get carried away."

"Tyler," Jason said, "do you know anything about the stars?"

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Hugo%202006%20Winner%20N...Robert%20Charles%20-%20Spin%20(v1.0)%20[html].html (10 of 382)8-12-2006 23:45:59

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

Wilson,RobertCharles-SpinSPINRobertCharlesWilsonfile:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Hugo%202006%20Winner%20No...0Robert%20Charles%20-%20Spin%20(v1.0)%20[html].html(1of382)8-12-200623:45:59Wilson,RobertCharles-SpinHugoAwardWinnerforBestNovel2006ByRobertCharlesWilsonfromTomDohertyAssociatesAHiddenPlaceDarwinia...

展开>> 收起<<

Robert Charles Wilson - Spin.pdf

共382页,预览77页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Robert Charles Wilson - Spin

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: